Yi Liu - Local Dynamics of Industrial Upgrading: The Case of the Pearl River Delta in China

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As the world economy is moving into a new decade of the 2020s, we are experiencing major transformations and challenges in the global geopolitical economy. One of the key issues at stake is economic globalization that has been underpinned by the emergence of global production networks in all sorts of industries and national economies since the 1990s. During the past two decades, China was one of the national economies that benefited much from its deepened participation in economic globalization. Its strategic coupling with the dynamics of global production networks has led to the rapid emergence of major economic corridors and high growth regions within its vast national territory. And yet not all regions and localities in China have gained equally from such coupling with globalization dynamics.

It is in this context of massive and unequal industrial transformation in China that this book makes a major contribution to the existing debates on industrial upgrading. Lius careful approach to conceptualizing the different coupling mechanisms and their geographical implications for understanding industrial development in a particular high-growth region of China, the Pearl River Delta (PRD), is especially welcomed. His richly grounded empirical analysis not only eschews the general inputoutput approach in many sweeping economic studies of global value chains, but also compels us to focus more sharply on the economic actors who actually perform such upgrading and, in doing so, hold down both benefits and perils associated with economic globalization to their specific places and regions. To illustrate his actor-specific mechanisms of strategic coupling, Liu offers very useful in-depth material on electronics, apparel, and automotivethree major industries in the PRD that have been coupled differentially with global production networks.

At a more personal level, it gives me enormous pleasure to write this foreword to Lius new book that is based on his doctoral work at the National University of Singapore. As his main thesis supervisor, I witnessed firsthand his tireless energy in both work and leisure! So it is a great outcome to see his ideas and hard work during doctoral research being further refined and developed into this book-length publication. This book will be an enduring contribution to our understanding of the dynamics of industrial transformation in China and serving as a useful guide for researchers and policy makers contemplating the role of global production networks in economic development in many different parts of the world. I am sure like me, you will find many instructive lessons to be learnt in this work.