Lauretta Rubini

Guangdong Province, China: firms, cities and sectors of excellence

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide an updated picture of the emergence of specific firms, cities and sectors of excellence in one of the best performing industrial areas of China: Guangdong Province.Design/methodology/approach – The paper focuses on a single province‐case study and zooms on its leading territories, sectors, firms and policies. Geographical areas, industrial sectors and firms are defined “of excellence” according to their contribution to the overall industrial performance of the province.Findings – High industrial performances are not equally spread in the province. They involve specific sectors (such as electronics), areas (Pearl River Delta) and even specific firms (particularly Chinese‐owned and SOEs). This picture is in line with the recent policy objectives (support to ODI by national companies, indigenous innovation, national and local champions, restructuring of SOEs) and with the history of preferential industrial development policies.Research limitations/implication...

Special Economic Zones and Cluster Dynamics: China

Clusters of specialized firms are now coming to be recognized as an important level of integration and organization in successful industrial economies. Such clusters, among which are industrial districts, were prominent in nineteenth-century European industrial development (in Italy, Britain, and Germany) and in the United States, and then in Japan, and are now viewed as being central to successful industrial development in the twenty-first century in China and India, where they are specifically promoted through ad hoc policies. In designating special economic areas, such as geographic clusters of firms or special economic zones (SEZs), national and regional authorities aim to attract and stimulate economic activities in specific, bounded areas of the country, where business-friendly rules can apply. After presenting the rationale and main features of SEZs, the article illustrates the experience of China, and in particular Guangdong Province and the Pearl River Delta, where SEZs based on Shenzhen and other urban centers have played a prominent role. A careful analysis of the policies adopted in the country to kick off and manage the transition process highlights a central concern of the government to manage the spatial patterns of industrial development. Specific tools have been developed in order to shape the geography of industry: cluster promotion has been pursued while also managing a number of SEZs with the specific aim to concentrate the early stages of industrial development in confined areas, learning from the prior experience of industrial districts in Europe, the United States, and Japan. In China, and especially in Guangdong, the development of SEZs and the promotion of clusters of firms have gone hand in hand to achieve long-term industrial development objectives.

Transnational Research Networks in Chinese Scientific Production. An Investigation on Health-Industry Related Sectors

Transnational research networks (TRN) are becoming increasingly complex. Such complexity may have both positive and negative effects on the quality of research. Our work studies the evolution over time of Chinese TRN and the role of complexity on the quality of Chinese research, given the leading role this country has recently acquired in international science. We focus on the fields of geriatrics and gerontology. We build an original dataset of all scientific publications of China in these areas in 2009, 2012 and 2015, starting from the ISI Web of Knowledge (ISI WoK) database. Using Social Network Analysis (SNA), we analyze the change in scientific network structure across time. Second, we design indices to control for the different aspects of networks complexity (number of authors, country heterogeneity and institutional heterogeneity) and we perform negative binomial regressions to identify the main determinants of research quality. Our analysis shows that research networks in the field of geriatrics and gerontology have gradually become wider in terms of countries and have become more balanced. Furthermore, our results identify that different forms of complexity have different impacts on quality, including a reciprocal moderating effect. In particular, according to our analysis, research quality benefits from complex research networks both in terms of countries and of types of institutions involved, but that such networks should be “compact” in terms of number of authors. Eventually, we suggest that complexity should be carefully taken into account when designing policies aimed at enhancing the quality of research.

China and Europe networks in health: an empirical analysis on co-publications

In recent years, the impressive growth of China after the opening to market economy is facing long-term sustainability risks. In particular, the necessity to couple economic growth with an increase in the populations well-being has started to be raised. As health is a pivotal sector in terms of impact on life quality of the population, to deepen the knowledge of the factors and the dynamics regulating enhancements in this field becomes particularly relevant. Progress in health directly derives from progresses made in scientific research. This paper analyses the evolution of international cooperation of Chinese institutions in health-related scientific fields, measured in terms of co-publications. Changes in Chinas position in the international scientific literature are traced, focusing then on the current structure of co-authorships with the first five EU countries in terms of GDP and highlighting differences in the weight, the structure and the degree of complexity of the relation networks.

Transfer of knowledge in science-based research networks: a case study on human health genetics in Italy

This paper deals with the transfer of knowledge in science-based research networks, with particular reference to the role of international networking for the quality of research. A high-quality basic research system is the base for the establishment of effective mechanisms of knowledge spillovers and diffusion within the academic and to the productive world. The impact of international networking on the quality of research is analysed by means of an empirical model applied to data on the public research laboratories dealing with genetics in the Emilia Romagna region (Italy).

Channels to innovation: The Chinese experience in the automotive sector

China is nowadays the first market and producer in the automotive sector. However, Chinese actors still look not able to compete internationally with the global champions of the sector, both as automakers and component-makers. In this context, we analyse the policies for technological upgrading of the sector, on which national government have greatly focused since the mid-Eighties. One of the main tools used by national authorities to foster the technological endowment of national firms is the sector opening to foreign actors, specifically through joint ventures. Lately, however, growing emphasis on endogenous technology, and more generally on internal markets, national firms and indigenous sources, has been put in national industrial plan on the sector. After the analysis of the story of Chinese policy interventions in this field, we focus on firm level data to verify empirically the differences in terms of innovation activity of different groups of firms in the Chinese market, distinguishing among joint ventures, wholly-Chinese and wholly-foreign owned.

Evolutionary Paths in Supporting Firms in China. An Analysis of Leading Firms and Insights on Industrial Policy

The paper studies the evolution in the support to firms in China. Using a tailored imitativelearning approach, Chinese policy makers have supported national champions (similarlyto the Japanese experience), while also favouring the emergence of sectoral agglomerations ofsmes (as in the case of clusters and industrial districts). By means of an analysis of the leadingindustrial firms of Guangdong province, where the process of opening of Chinese economystarted, the paper highlights specific (more or less explicit) choices of industrial policy thathave driven the industrial development of the nation.