The Development of Trade Fair Ecologies in China: Case Studies from Chengdu and Shanghai

Harald Bathelt and Gang Zeng
Additional contact information
Harald Bathelt: Department of Political Science and Department of Geography and Program in Planning, University of Toronto, Sidney Smith Hall, 100 St. George Street, Toronto ON M5S 3G3, Canada; and Zijiang Visiting Professor, Department of Urban and Regional Economy, East China Normal University, 3663 North Zhongshan Road, Shanghai 200062, China
Gang Zeng: Department of Urban and Regional Economy, East China Normal University, 3663 North Zhongshan Road, Shanghai 200062, China

Environment and Planning A, 2014, vol. 46, issue 3, 511-530

Abstract: Despite China's rapid economic growth and embedding into global value chains, not much is known about the primary places where buyers and sellers from China and abroad meet, do business, and circulate information and knowledge: That is, the national/international trade fairs in the country. Previous reports suggest that the number and size of such events in China is growing and that the trade fair business is in the process of catching up. Under these circumstances, trade fairs may develop into import or export events, where buyers and sellers engage in transactions, or into temporary clusters, where they exchange knowledge for industrial upgrading and innovation. In this context this paper explores the interaction and communication patterns of firms at Chinese trade fairs and investigates whether these events are similar to those in Europe and North America. The analysis involves systematic comparison of the communication and interaction practices at three national/international trade fairs in Shanghai and Chengdu, based on a total of 102 semistructured interviews.

Keywords: trade fairs; trade fair ecologies; temporary clusters; latecomer development; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1068/a45661 (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:sae:envira:v:46:y:2014:i:3:p:511-530

DOI: 10.1068/a45661

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Environment and Planning A
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().