Zhigao Liu

Visualizing the intellectual structure and evolution of innovation systems research: a bibliometric analysis

Despite increasing awareness of the need to trace the trajectory of innovation system research, so far little attention has been given to quantitative depiction of the evolution of this fast-moving research field. This paper uses CiteSpace to demonstrate visually intellectual structures and developments. The study uses citation analysis to detect and visualize disciplinary distributions, keyword co-word networks and journal cocitation networks, highly cited references, as well as highly cited authors to identify intellectual turning points, pivotal points and emerging trends, in innovation systems system research from 1975 to 2012.

Carbon emissions embodied in value added chains in China

Abstract The literature on carbon leakage and embodied carbon in regional trade is extensive. However, many studies are primarily concerned with emissions embodied in demand-supply chains and ignore the issue of carbon transfer behind the value-added chains. We promote a model to calculate value-based emissions (VBEs) and carbon emissions embodied in the value-added chain using the multi-regional input–output model (MRIO). Taking China as an example, VBEs and carbon emissions embodied in value-added chains at the sub-national level based on MRIO tables for 1997 and 2007 in China were analyzed. Transferred carbon emissions embodied in regional value-added chains in China showed rapid growth between 1997 and 2007. However, the absolute values of inter-regional net transferred carbon emissions embodied in value added chains were small and showed a declining trend. Therefore, the regional inequality between economic growth and carbon emissions pollution reduced between 1997 and 2007, although the amount of emissions embodied in regional value-added chains increased as of the inter-regional economic link in China gained close proximity.

The 798 Art District: Multi-scalar drivers of land use succession and industrial restructuring in Beijing

Abstract Since the post-1980 economic reforms, Chinese cities, in particular large cites, have experienced far reaching industrial restructuring and spatial transformation. A decentralization of manufacturing industries from urban centres was accompanied by the rise of service and creative industry districts on previous industrial sites. This article explores the interconnections of global forces, state–market relationships, land use policies, art markets, the Chinese system of governance, and other trans-local factors in transforming Beijing from an industrial city to a service and creative industries-oriented global metropolis, by examining the rise and transformation of Beijing 798 Art District. The case study finds that decommissioned industrial sites had characteristics that made them attractive when central and local governments started to promote creative industries, but, with development of urban art districts, the impact of avant-garde artists on the direction of development was reduced, and developers, high profile galleries and multinational corporations had an increasing influence. The results of our study indicate that the literature on intra-metropolitan location and change, and the evolution of industrial districts should pay more attention to the reuse of the decommissioned industrial land and sites for industrial restructuring, and particularly to the role of multi-scalar factors in reshaping the geography of cities.

A bibliometric analysis on rural studies in human geography and related disciplines

Although the world has experienced rapid urbanization, rural areas have always been and are still an important research field in human geography. This paper performed a bibliometric analysis on rural geography studies based on the peer-reviewed articles concerning rural geography published in the SSCI-listed journals from 1990 to 2012. Our analysis examines publication patterns (document types and publishing languages, article outputs and their categories, major journals and their publication, most productive authors, geographic distribution and international collaboration) and demonstrates the evolution of intellectual development of rural geography by studying highly cited papers and their citation networks and temporal evolution of keywords. Our research findings include: The article number has been increasing since the 1900s, and went through three phases, and the rural geography research is dominated in size by UK and USA. The USA is the most productive in rural geography, but the UK had more impact than other countries in the terms of the average citation of articles. Three distinct but loosely linked research streams of rural geography were identified and predominated by the UK rural geographers. The keywords frequencies evolved according to contexts of rural development and academic advances of human geography, but they were loosely and scattered since the rural researches in different regions or different systems faced with different problems.

Capturing gains by relocating global production networks: the rise of Chongqing’s notebook computer industry, 2008–2014

Abstract In 2008 a new notebook manufacturing cluster was established in Chongqing in western China. By 2013 it accounted for some 25% of world output by volume. Chongqing’s ability to attract this manufacturing supply chain was driven by several factors that permitted strategic coupling: the existence of complex networks of cooperation and economies external to the firm but internal to contemporary global production networks; changed conditions in southeast and east China; and the creation by Chongqing Municipal People’s Government with central state support of hard and soft infrastructures and externalities that drove down logistic and production costs and permitted constant product innovation.

Progress of economic geography in China’s mainland since 2000

Economic geography in China’s mainland has developed in a different way from that in many other countries. On the one hand, it has been increasingly active in participating in academic dialogues and knowledge development led by Anglophone countries; on the other hand, it takes practice-based and policy-oriented research, i.e. satisfying the demands from the Chinese government and society, as the linchpin of research. Since there has been a lot of literature reviewing the development of economic geography in the country before the new millennium, this paper will make a comprehensive analysis of the discipline in 2000–2015, based on a bibliometric survey and research projects done by Chinese economic geographers. The analysis indicates that (1) economic geography research in China’s mainland is unevenly distributed but concentrated in several leading institutions; (2) traditional research fields like human-nature system, regional disparity, industrial location and transportation geography remain dominant while new topics such as globalization, multinational corporations and foreign direct investments, information and communication technology, producer services, climate change and carbon emission emerge as important research areas; (3) Chinese economic geography is featured by policy-oriented research funded by government agencies, having considerable impacts on regional policy making in China, both national and regional. To conclude, the paper argues that the development of economic geography in China’s mainland needs to follow a dual track in the future, i.e. producing knowledge for the international academic community and undertaking policy-oriented research to enhance its role as a major consulting body for national, regional and local development.

Visualizing intercity scientific collaboration networks in China

Since the late 1990s new Chinese government schemes [including Project 211 and 985 and the Knowledge Innovation Program (Suttmeier et al, 2006)] and exponential funding increases have sought to improve the scientific performance of universities and other public research institutes. China has edged into the group of world-leading countries as measured by international scientific production (Zhou and Leydesdorff, 2006). Domestically Chinese scientists have published a vast number of Chinese journal articles. Interorganizational scientific research collaboration is increasingly common (Beckmann, 1994); in part, because new information technologies facilitate collaboration between researchers from different locations and institutions. The featured graphic is a visual map of intercity scientific collaborations in China, based on 2013 data, and over 570 000 journal articles included in the China Academic Journal Network Publishing Database (CAJD), the most comprehensive full-text database of Chinese journals in China. In order to identify intercity scientific collaborations accurately, the following steps were taken: (1) extract the geographical address of the workplace of all authors who published in the key journals in 2013 by parsing the metadata from the CAJD website; (2) geocode the address of each author of each article using Baidu Map Application Programming Interface (API) and compute intercity collaboration frequencies; and (3) generate the association matrix of the 321 cities at prefecture level or above and use spatial visualization techniques to plot the matrix. The size of the nodes and width of lines denote the total number of articles generated by the corresponding city and intercity collaboration strength, respectively. The most productive city is Beijing, followed by Shanghai, Nanjing, Guangzhou, Wuhan and Xi’an [figure 1(a)]. These cities, together with Chengdu and Tianjin, form the national-scale toplevel knowledge collaboration networks, with Beijing dominating absolutely [figure 1(b)]. Although collaboration between Beijing and cities in neighbouring provinces predominate over the second-tier network, two subnational collaboration networks do emerge: Shanghai– Nanjing–Hangzhou in the Yangtze River Delta; and Chengdu–Chongqing in Western China [figure 1(c)]. Collaborations centered on regional scientific cites (such as Chengdu, Chongqing, Zhengzhou, Nanchang, Xi’an, and Shenzhen) constitute the third-tier network [figure 1(a)]. The visualization identifies the Chinese intercity scientific collaboration networks, but to better understand the scientific collaboration networks, it is necessary (1) to map international scientific collaboration networks for Chinese cities and compare international and domestic collaborations, and (2) to examine their evolution. This map offers a starting point.