Economic network dynamics: a structural analysis of the international connectivity of Chinese manufacturing firms

Michele Lo Re, Eleonora Veglianti, Fabrizio Parente, Umberto Monarca and Cosimo Magazzino ()

Journal of Economic Studies, 2023, vol. 50, issue 8, 1585-1600

Abstract: Purpose - This paper explores international trade of the Chinese manufacturing industries through the lenses of network analysis (NA) to visualise the world trade network of the Chinese economy, describe its topology and better explain the international organisation of Chinese manufacturing industries. Design/methodology/approach - The authors built a dataset of 40,550 Chinese companies and their 107,026 subsidiaries in 118 countries from Orbis-BVD and used a NA to investigate the connection between China and other countries. In particular, the authors studied the connections between Chinese companies and their subsidiaries in order to build a network of Chinese industries. Findings - The authors found that the network of Chinese companies is ramified but not wide and it can be divided into two clusters. Moreover, the relations between China and other peripheral countries are strongly mediated by a few leading locations (e.g. Hong Kong and the USA). Originality/value - This paper contributes to the literature in several ways. First, the authors provide empirical evidence on the magnitude and ramifications of Chinese enterprises in the world. The existing studies generally focus on applying NA to sectoral insights (Mao and Yang, 2012; Shaikhet al., 2016; Zhenget al., 2016; Wanzenbö ck, 2018; Kricheneet al., 2019), whereas in this work the authors take a comprehensive view of the entire Chinese manufacturing system. Second, this paper complements the existing literature identifying the difference between cluster levels in Chinese manufacturing (Wu and Jiang, 2011) by proposing a cluster centralisation method to analyse the international network of Chinese firms rather than just the national network. Finally, the results also shed light on the international trade relationship between China, Hong Kong and the USA.

Keywords: China; Network analysis; Globalization; Manufacturing industries; Network clustering (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (text/html)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Economic network dynamics: a structural analysis of the international connectivity of Chinese manufacturing firms (2023)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eme:jespps:jes-10-2022-0531

DOI: 10.1108/JES-10-2022-0531

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Studies is currently edited by Prof Mohsen Bahmani-Oskooee

More articles in Journal of Economic Studies from Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Emerald Support ().