Exploring the Upgrading of Chinese Automotive Manufacturing Industry in the Global Value Chain: An Empirical Study Based on Panel Data

Fucai Lu, Wei He, Yang Cheng, Sihua Chen, Liang Ning and Xiaoan Mei
Additional contact information
Fucai Lu: School of Business Administration, Jiangxi University of Finance and Economics, No.168, East Shuanggang Road, Changbei, Nanchang 330013, China
Wei He: School of Business Administration, Jiangxi University of Finance and Economics, No.168, East Shuanggang Road, Changbei, Nanchang 330013, China
Yang Cheng: School of Business Administration, Jiangxi University of Finance and Economics, No.168, East Shuanggang Road, Changbei, Nanchang 330013, China
Sihua Chen: School of Information Technology, Jiangxi Key Laboratory of Data and Knowledge Engineering, Jiangxi University of Finance and Economics, Nanchang 330013, China
Liang Ning: School of Business Administration, Jiangxi University of Finance and Economics, No.168, East Shuanggang Road, Changbei, Nanchang 330013, China
Xiaoan Mei: School of Business Administration, Jiangxi University of Finance and Economics, No.168, East Shuanggang Road, Changbei, Nanchang 330013, China

Sustainability, 2015, vol. 7, issue 5, 1-23

Abstract: In the age of globalization, the upgrading of China’s manufacturing industries has attracted great attention from both academicians and practitioners, as it certainly has great implications for the development of China and, even further, for the development of the whole world. To address this issue, the study clarifies the effects of the internal technological innovation capability (ITIC) and external linkages (ELs) on upgrading the Chinese automotive manufacturing industry (CAMI) in the global value chain, in order to indicate the appropriate way for the CAMI to be further upgraded and provide references for the formulation of regional automotive industrial policies. Based on Chinese panel data, the results confirm that both ITIC and EL are important for the upgrading of the CAMI, with ITIC being the more important. Improvement of ITIC facilitates the industry’s cooperation with the EL, resulting in better knowledge access. Furthermore, the results of cluster analysis reveal that regions with relatively developed automotive industries place emphasis on both the ITIC and EL. However, in some regions (e.g., Shanghai and Chongqing), the utility of EL seems insufficient. Therefore, the results of this paper, on the one hand, suggest policies should be directed towards increasing the ITIC of CAMI. On the other hand, in some regions, managers and policymakers need to explore further the advantage of clustering.

Keywords: global value chain; automotive manufacturing industry; upgrading (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/7/5/6189/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/7/5/6189/ (text/html)

Related works:
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:gam:jsusta:v:7:y:2015:i:5:p:6189-6211:d:49818

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().