 Upgrading in China’s apparel industry: international trade, local clusters and institutional contextsShengjun Zhu and Canfei He Post-Communist Economies, 2018, vol. 30, issue 2, 193-215 Abstract: This article focuses on the concept of upgrading, and seeks to move away from a firm-centred approach of industrial upgrading towards a framework that recognises not only a firm’s integration into global value chains, but also its embeddedness within local networks and the context of wider institutional arrangements. Based on one firm-level database, this article measures upgrading in China’s apparel industry at the firm level, which allows us not only to evaluate the extent of upgrading in the industry as a whole and to compare its extent among individual firms and selected groups of firms, but also to differentiate and measure different types of upgrading. Empirical results confirm that the heterogeneity of firms, global and local linkages and the wider historical, political, institutional and economic context have all played a critical role in the process of upgrading, suggesting that a focus on dynamics of firm upgrading alone is insufficient. Date: 2018 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:pocoec:v:30:y:2018:i:2:p:193-215 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from DOI: 10.1080/14631377.2017.1362099 Access Statistics for this article Post-Communist Economies is currently edited by Roger Clarke More articles in Post-Communist Economies from Taylor & Francis Journals |
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