Industrial Upgrading from Below: Can Chinese Local Manufacturing Firms Reconfigure Global Value Chains?

Wei Zhao ()
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Wei Zhao: ESSCA School of Management

A chapter in China’s New Development Strategies, 2022, pp 167-194 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Chinese local manufacturing firms are mostly suppliers positioned in the midstream of global value chains (GVC). Although their dominant mode of industrial upgrading is path-dependent sustaining the existing governance structure of GVC, some leading firms with accumulated experience and technological know-how adopt more radical strategy which can configure or reconfigure the whole chain structure, by diversifying to related sectors, developing upstream technologies, and even creating new industries. Based on analysis of three sectors—LED lights, mobile terminals, and new energy vehicle batteries—in Huizhou City, a region of manufacturing clusters in South China, we identify the upgrading pathways of local firms via technological and non-technological efforts over time and highlight the value-chain-reconfiguring tendency of upgrading when local firms explore emerging sectors from below. This kind of sector-shaping upgrading practice by firms gets support from national and local development policies and can profoundly change the structure of China’s production networks and GVCs.

Keywords: Global value chain; Industrial upgrading; Manufacturing firms; Industrial cluster; China; BYD (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-981-19-3008-9_7

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DOI: 10.1007/978-981-19-3008-9_7

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