Geographical Dynamics and Firm Spatial Strategy in China

This book offers the first detailed account of the complex geographical dynamics currently restructuring China's export-oriented industries. The topics covered are relevant to post-socialist geography, development studies, economics, economic sociology and international studies. It offers academics, international researchers, postgraduate and advanced undergraduate students in these fields an accessible, grounded, yet theoretically sophisticated account of the geographies of global production networks, value chains, and regional development in developing countries and emerging economies. It is of particular interest to economic geographers and economic sociologists involved in the growing debates over local clusters, embeddedness, global sourcing and global production, and over the global value chain/global production network. It also appeals to national policymakers, since it directly addresses economic and industrial policy issues, such as industrial competitiveness, regional and national development, industrial and employment restructuring and trade regulation.

Develops a strategy-related theory to explain the discussions between public and private economic governance in global value chains and global production networks Offers the first detailed account of the complex geographical dynamics currently restructuring China's export-oriented industries Addresses at different scales (global, regional and local) the legacies and social structures of the command economy Opens up a broader field for the discussion of corporate tactics and regional strategies Demonstrates the interface between evolutionary economic geography approaches and the global value chain/global production network Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

Autorentext
(1) Shengjun Zhu College of Urban and Environmental Sciences Peking University Beijing 100871, China Email: zhus@pku.edu.cn Shengjun Zhu joins the College of Urban and Environmental Sciences at Peking University (China) from Swansea University (UK), where he worked as a lecturer for two years. He received a Ph.D. in Geography at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (USA). Before coming to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he earned a Bachelor and Master Degree in Geography and a Bachelor Degree in Economics from Peking University, China. His major interests lie in globalization; regional development; global production networks; global value chains; industrial relocation and delocalization; industrial, social and environmental upgrading/downgrading. With his inter-disciplinary research and education background, Dr. Zhu is able to thoroughly investigate research questions and offer unique insights and perspectives. His papers have been published in some high-quality academic journals, including Journal of Contemporary Asia, Geoforum, Eurasian Geography and Economics, Geojournal and Post-communist Economies. At the same time, Dr. Zhu has accumulated abundant industrial experience from various consulting projects. Selected Recent Publications: Zhu, S., C. He and Y. Liu. 2014. Going Green or Going Away: EnvironmentalRegulation, Economic Geography and Firms' Strategies in China's Pollution-intensive Industries. Geoforum, 55: 53-65. Lan, T. and S. Zhu (corresponding author). 2014. Chinese Apparel Value Chains in Europe: Low-end Fast Fashion, Regionalization, and Transnational Entrepreneurship in Prato, Italy. Eurasian Geography and Economics, 55(2): 156-174. Zhu, S. and C. He. 2014. Global, Regional and Local: New Firm Formation and Spatial Restructuring in China's Apparel Industry. GeoJournal, 79(2): 237-253. Zhu, S. and J. Pickles. 2014. Bring in, Go up, Go West, Go Out: Upgrading, Regionalisation and Delocalisation in China's Apparel Production Networks. Journal of Contemporary Asia, 44(1): 36-63. Zhu, S. and C. He. 2013. Geographical Dynamics and Industrial Relocation: Spatial Strategies of Apparel Firms in Ningbo, China. Eurasian Geography and Economics, 54(3): 342-362. (2) John Pickles Earl N. Phillips Distinguished Professor of International Studies Department of Geography University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Saunders Hall, Campus Box 3220 Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3220 Phone: (919)962-3919 Email:jpickles@unc.edu John Pickles is an economic geographer trained in political economy and development studies, cultural and social theory, and continental philosophy. His research currently focuses on global production networks, European economic and social spaces particularly post-socialist transformations in Central Europe and Euro-Med Neighborhood Policies in Southern Europe. He also works on the cultural economies of maps and mapping, counter-mapping, and the use of maps in social movements. He holds BA and MA degrees from Oxford University and Ph.D. degrees form the University of Natal and the Pennsylvania State University. He joined the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2001 as the Earl N Phillips Distinguished Professor of International Studies and served as the Chair of the Department of Geography between 2007-2013 . He is a Fellow of the Institute for Arts and Humanities and of the Center for Urban and Regions Studies. He serves on the Advisory Boards for the Center for European Studies, the Carolina Asia Center, the Center for Muslim and Middle Eastern Civilizations, the Office of Study Abroad, and the University Program in Cultural Studies. He directs the University Supply Chain Program and served as an appointed member of the Chancellor's Labor and Licensing Advisory Committee until July 2012. His research and teaching focus primarily on issues of geographical and social change, particularly in regions that are undergoing major ruptures in socio-economic life and under conditions of economic -- and often physical -- violence. These concerns have their roots in questions of geographical uneven development, whether in post-war Britain, colonial and post-colonial Africa, the unraveling of state socialism in Central Europe, the building of the new Europe, or the operation and effects of global apparel production networks. Each is heavily inflected through his reading of critical theory, hermeneutic phenomenology, cultural studies, and post-structural social theory. [See Encyclopedia of Geography entry] He has recently completed books on globalization and regionalization, state and society in post-socialist Europe, and a history of spaces. In 2014 he co-edited a book with the ILO Better Work Programme on Towards Decent Work and is currently working on an edited collection on European and Latin American autonomous political thought --The Anomie of the Earth -- with Federico Luisetti and Wil KaiSer for Duke University Press, and an RGS-IBG book with Adrian Smith, Robert Begg, Milan Bucek, Poli Roukova, and Rudolf Pastor on Articulations of Capital. In 2013-2014, Professor Pickles was the Distinguished Visiting Fellow for the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Queen Mary University of London, and Nadácia VÚB Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Department of Public Administration and Regional Development in the Faculty of National Economy at the Economics University of Bratislava, Slovakia. Selected Recent Publications: Arianna Rossi, Amy Luinstra and John Pickles (eds.) 2014. Towards Better Work: Understanding Labour in Apparel Global Value Chains. Advances in Labour Studies Series. ILO and Palgrave Macmillan: Geneva and Basingstoke. John Pickles (ed). 2009. Globalization and Regionalization in Post-socialist Economies: the Common Economic Spaces of Europe. Palgrave Macmillan. John Pickles (ed). 2009. State and Society in Post-Socialist and Post-Soviet Economies. Palgrave Macmillan. John Pickles. 2004. A History of Spaces: Cartographic Reason, Mapping and the Geo-Coded World. Routledge. Smith, Adrian, John Pickles, Milan Buek, Rudolf Pástor, and Bob Begg. 2014. "The political economy of global production networks: regional industrial c…