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.

(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: Environmental Regulation, 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 Bucek, Rudolf Pástor, and Bob Begg. 2014. "The political economy of global production networks: regional industrial change and differential upgrading in the East European clothing industry." Journal of Economic Geography 14 (6): 1023-51.

Pickles, John, and Adrian Smith. 2011. "Delocalization and Persistence in the European Clothing Industry: The Reconfiguration of Trade and Production Networks." Regional Studies 45 (2): 167 - 85.

Arnold, Dennis, and John Pickles. 2011. "Global Work, Surplus Labor, and the Precarious Economies of the Border." Antipode 43 (5): 1598-624.

Pickles, John, Adrian Smith, Milan Bucek, Poli Roukova, and Robert Begg. 2006. "Upgrading, Changing Competitive Pressures, and Diverse Practices in the East and Central European Apparel Industry." Environment and Planning A 38 (12): 2305-24.

 

(3) Canfei He

Professor, Dean  

College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University

Associate Director,

Peking University-Lincoln Institute Center for Urban Development and Land Policy

Beijing 100871, China

Phone: (86)10-6275-7075

Email: hecanfei@urban.pku.edu.cn

 

Canfei He earned his Ph.D. degree in geography from Arizona State University in 2001, and then moved to the University of Memphis, Tennessee, where he taught as an assistant professor. In August 2003, he returned to China as an associate professor in Peking University’s College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, and was promoted to full professor in 2009. In addition to his academic duties at Peking University, Dr. He has served as associate dean of the college of urban and environmental sciences and the deputy director of the Peking University–Lincoln Institute Center for Urban Development and Land Policy since 2007. He is the associate editor of two Chinese journals including World Regional Geography and Geographical Research and sits on the editorial board of several Chinese journals, including International Urban Planning, Economic Geography and Progress of Geographical Science. He is also in the editorial board of some international journals, including Eurasian Geography and Economics, Regional Studies, Regional Science (Open Access Journal by Regional Studies Association) and a newly created journal, Area Development and Policy. He is a section editor in charge of Industrial Geography for the Wiley-AAG International Encyclopedia of Geography. He is the guest editor of Growth and Change during 2013-2015 to edit the special issue on Economic Transition, Urban Dynamics and Economic Development in China. He has been invited to serve in the organizing committee of the fourth global conference on economic geography which will be held in Oxford University in 2015.

Dr. He’s research interests include multinational corporations, industrial location and spatial clustering of firms in China. The World Bank invited him to write a background paper on industrial agglomeration in China for the World Development Report 2009: Reshaping Global Economic Geography. Dr. He has authored six academic books and his work is published widely in English journals including Regional Studies, Paper in Regional Science, Geoforum, GeoJournal, Annals of Association of American Geographers, Urban Studies, Urban Geography, Annals of Regional Science, Applied Geography, Growth and Change, International Migration Review, Eurasian Geography and Economics, Post-Communist Economies, and China & the World Economy. His works have been awarded by Chinese Society of Geography, Regional Science Association of China, and Ministry of Education in China. In 2014, He was granted the Outstanding Young Scientist Award by National Natural Science Foundation of China.

 

Selected Recent Publications:

He, Canfei, Zhang, Peng and Sun, Yifei (2014) Agglomeration Economies and Business Innovation: Evidence from Electronic and Telecommunication Equipments Manufacturing Industry in China, Annals of Regional Science 53(3), 671-701.

He, Canfei and Huang, Zhiji (2014) How Are Land Use Changes Associated with Urban Growth: A Structural Equation Approach, Urban Studies, 51(13), 2880-2898.

He, Canfei, Pan, Fenghua and Yan Yan (2012) Is Economic Transition Harmful to Urban Environment? Evidence from Industrial Air Pollution in Chinese Cities, Urban Studies, 49(8), 1767-1790.

He, Canfei, Zhang, Teng and Wang, Rui(2012) Air Quality in Urban China, Eurasian Geography and Economics, 53(6), 750-771.

He, Canfei and Wang, Junsong (2012) Regional and Sectoral Differences in the Spatial Restructuring of Chinese Manufacturing Industries in the Post-WTO Period, GeoJournal, 77, 361-381.

He, Canfei, Zou, Peisi and Zhu, Yangang (2011) Spatial Organization of Multinational Corporations in China, Eurasian Geography and Economics, 52(6), 809-834.

Kuby, Mike and He, Canfei (2011) The Changing Structure of Energy Supply, Demand and CO₂ Emissions in China, Annals of Association of American Geographers, 101(4), 795-805.