Godfrey Yeung
Biographic Data
| ID | 3711206 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Godfrey Yeung |
| GIVEN NAMES | Godfrey |
| FAMILY NAME | Yeung |
| SIGNATURE | YEUNG G |
| AFFILIATIONS | National University of Singapore |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7027-5005 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 33 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 112 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 33 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2001 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Prize‐winning paper for 2025, SJTG sponsored lectures, forums and tribute
Since 2013, the Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography (SJTG) has awarded prizes for the best paper by a graduate student and for the best overall paper published in the journal. All past prize winners are recorded on the SJTG's homepage, available at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/page/journal/14679493/homepage/best_paper_prize.htm. However, in 2025, Wiley (who publishes the SJTG through an agreement with the Department of Geography at the Nat…
Digital platforms and the spatial transformation of urban villages in southern China: A case for platform-urban villagism
10.1080/02723638.2024.2359308
Does Technological Intensity Matter for Global Cross‐Border Mergers and Acquisitions in Manufacturing, 1998–2018
Despite being a key feature of the globalising world since the 1980s, the patterns and relationships between acquirer and target firms in cross‐border mergers and acquisitions (M&As) have only gained attention in recent years. By examining the data between 1998 and 2018 through multinomial logistic regression models, this paper investigates the goodness of match on technological intensity (the closeness of technological capabilities) between acqu…
Competitive dynamics of lead firms and their systems suppliers in the automotive industry
Lead firms play a dominant role in the governance structure of conventional global production network (GPN) analyses but this framework is not fully applicable in sectors where (new) regulations, technologies and subsequent market changes have a disruptive effect on its governance structure. This paper proposes an analytical framework to examine how disruptive effects of industrial megatrends in forms of new regulations and technologies and the s…
Digital Platform, Spatial-Digital Fix, and the Reconfiguration of Apparel Production Networks
This article proposes an analytical framework of spatial-digital fix to explain how emerging online platform retailers utilize digital technologies to fix their crises in backward and forward value chains—both digitally and spatially—and their subsequent positive and negative impacts on various actors in production and distribution networks. By applying the analytical framework on Shein (an emerging online fast fashion retailer originally based i…
Codifiability and geographical proximity of supply networks in automotive industry
This methodological paper proposes two codifiability indicators to examine trade and manufacturing statistics and the spatial distribution of value-added manufacturing activities. Codifiability is defined as the level of documentation about the manufacturing processes of a product required to allow tasks to be replicated by other suppliers. First, the codifiability indicators allow researchers to examine products that are grouped under the same s…
Proximity and cross-border acquisitions of technology assets by firms in latecomer economies: A study of Chinese firms, 2001-2018
We propose an analytical framework to examine how various dimensions of proximity between home and host countries could account for the trajectories and specificities of cross-border acquisitions of technology assets (CATAs) conducted by acquirer firms in latecomer economies. As Chinese firms have been increasingly using CATAs as a mean to catch up with their counterparts in advanced economies, we referred to their acquisition records to illustra…
Economic geographies of Asian international financial centers: A sympathetic critique
Through a comprehensive review of economic geography studies on Asian international financial centers (IFCs) published from 2009, this paper aims to provide a sympathetic critique of the key research trajectories of financial geographies and to outline research gaps where economic geographers could contribute to the relevant literature. Economic geographers have identified a prominent change in the geographies of the international finance industr…
Strategic coupling, path creation and diversification: Oil-related development in the ‘Straits Region’ since 1959
Hybrid governance of joint ventures in transitional economies: The case of Guangzhou Automobile Group in China
The conventional approach to examining firm-to-firm governance is unable to disentangle the complexity of strategies and the interplay between different actors with their corresponding rules and routines embedded within an institutional environment where the state plays as a key equity partner in joint ventures (JVs) in transitional economies. This paper proposes an analytical framework of hybrid governance to explain how an alignment of mutual i…
Efficiency of urban land use in China’s resource-based cities, 2000–2018
Pro-active regional policy and the relocation of manufacturing firms: A case study of state-led industrial relocation in Guangdong, China
To contribute to the debate on the importance of state vis-à-vis inter-firm competition in regional development, this paper examines a representative dataset of the relocation of manufacturing firms in Guangdong province of China with multinomial logistic regression models. To improve the competitiveness of manufacturing in the Pearl River Delta, the Guangdong government implemented pro-active policies to encourage the relocation of existing manu…
Efficiency of logistics land use: The case of Yangtze River Economic Belt in China, 2000–2017
Chinese state-owned commercial banks in reform: Inefficient and Yet Credible and Functional
After the initial public offerings of state-owned commercial banks (SOCBs) in 2005–2010, the transformation of the property structure blurred the conventional boundaries between public and private property in China while the state continued to play an important role in the regulation and operation of this 'hybrid property': the mixed public-private ownership structure adopted for previously wholly SOCBs. It is could be that the perceived lending …
Made in China 2025’: The development of a new energy vehicle industry in China
This paper examines how the state can facilitate the establishment of a domestic production network in new energy vehicles (NEVs), from the making of electric vehicle batteries and battery management systems to the manufacturing of NEVs. The case of China illustrates how a non-firm actor was able to create the largest NEV market in the world by implementing proactive policies for market creation and new industrial regulations for cost and range p…
Comparative Advantage
Comparative advantage is the capacity of an agent, a region, or a country to produce a specific commodity or provide a service at a lower opportunity cost over another agent, region, or country. It is one of the fundamental concepts in international economics and is normally used to support free trade and pertinent policy agendas in the Washington Consensus. Heterodox economists and neo‐Marxist social scientists, however, argue that empirical evi…
Firm Foundation and Growth
The firm is an intermediate agent to reduce the transaction costs incurred in dealing with individual economic actors. The firm acts as a nexus of contracts to allow transactions to be internalized and coordinated efficiently in the circular flow of production and consumption. Economic geographers highlight the interlinked relationships between institutions (the formal rules and regulations and informal norms) and industrial practices, and how th…
Local/Global Production Systems
Production systems incorporate different production stages based on research and development, product design, the exploration of raw materials and minerals, and the manufacture of parts and components, which lead to the final assembly of a product before it is distributed and eventually sold to consumers. The relative power relationships between the networks of firms in various stages of production and their specific locations can have a profound…
Trade, FDI , and Industrial Development
International trade and foreign direct investment are regarded as the catalysts for industrial and regional development. The ownership‐location‐internalization paradigm explains the rationales for the patterns of foreign direct investment, while the neoclassical international trade model hypothesizes that free trade promotes industrial development and reduces regional disparity across space. Augmented with the new trade theory and new growth mode…
Flexible Specialization
Flexible specialization is the phenomenon of a closely linked network of firms engaging in the production and distribution of nonstandard, specialized products to cater for ever‐changing consumer demands. The transformation from the mass production of standardized products under Fordism to the volume production of nonstandardized products under flexible specialization illustrates how different forms of production organization can shape the charac…
Rural banking in China: A case of centralization
Four types of banking institutions responded differently to the drive to centralize Chinese rural banking operations. In 2009 city commercial and market-oriented banks had a higher density of outlets in economically developed than in less developed counties, as expected, while rural banking institutions had an unexpectedly higher density in non-agricultural than in agriculture-based counties. Circumstantial evidence suggests that the wholly state…
The operation of Global Production Networks (GPNs) 2.0 and methodological constraints
Online Fashion Retailing and Retail Geography: The Blogshop Phenomenon in S ingapore
This paper examines why blogshops exist in S ingapore and how these unconventional online retailing channels can be extended to bricks and mortar shops. The rise of blogshops is due to a combination of low barriers to entry and the informal institutions that bind the blogshop community for mutual support, and the development of a self‐regulatory regime. Blogshops are spatially embedded and supported by the contextualised network of economic actor…
Rural banking in China: Geographically accessible but still financially excluded
Rural banking in China: geographically accessible but still financially excluded? Regional Studies. Based on the distribution patterns of rural credit cooperatives in about 2200 counties in 2009, this paper examines two aspects of financial exclusion in rural China after the restructuring of the banking industry. Despite the state's efforts to ensure financial inclusion in rural areas, poor farmers could be spatially included while still being de…
Geography, trade and regional development: The role of wage costs, exchange rates and currency/capital movements
Existing theories of geographical specialization and trade can be classified into four 15 groups: supply-side; demand-side; endogenous growth and institutional models. In the recent past, economic geographers have paid little attention to earlier regional economic analysis and concentrated for the most part on detailed examination of production structures, the chains linking upstream and downstream activities into production and value networks, c…
Towards global convergence: Emerging economies, the rise of China and western sunset
The financial crisis indicates the underlying bankruptcy of the last of a series of attempts to restore sustained growth in advanced countries since the end of the post-war Golden Age: Italian flexible specialization, Japanese and Rhine-style lean production, the new economy and Anglo-American financialization. Over the same period a number of emerging economies and in particular China have sustained high rates of growth. In the years to come, de…
Efficiency of urban land use in China’s resource-based cities, 2000–2018
Hybrid property, path dependence, market segmentation and financial exclusion: The case of the banking industry in China
This paper investigates the role of the state in the liberalisation of the banking industry in China and the implications for the conventional convergence thesis of market segmentation and financial exclusion. I argue that the usefulness of the convergence thesis is constrained because it does not take region‐specific institutional systems into consideration. This limitation is clearly illustrated by the experience of Chinese banking reforms. As …
Made in China 2025’: The development of a new energy vehicle industry in China
This paper examines how the state can facilitate the establishment of a domestic production network in new energy vehicles (NEVs), from the making of electric vehicle batteries and battery management systems to the manufacturing of NEVs. The case of China illustrates how a non-firm actor was able to create the largest NEV market in the world by implementing proactive policies for market creation and new industrial regulations for cost and range p…
Rural banking in China: Geographically accessible but still financially excluded
Rural banking in China: geographically accessible but still financially excluded? Regional Studies. Based on the distribution patterns of rural credit cooperatives in about 2200 counties in 2009, this paper examines two aspects of financial exclusion in rural China after the restructuring of the banking industry. Despite the state's efforts to ensure financial inclusion in rural areas, poor farmers could be spatially included while still being de…
How Banks in China make Lending Decisions
Based on interviews conducted in four major Chinese cities, this paper examines the determinants of lending by state-owned commercial banks (SOCBs) to manufacturing firms in China. The conventional relationship banking and transaction lending theories helps explain at least part of the lender–borrower relationship in China. The perceived lending bias against non-state-owned enterprises could actually be reconciled as rational decision-making by S…
Foreign Direct Investment and Investment Environment in Dongguan Municipality of Southern China
Based on 26 case studies, this paper investigates the socio-economic causes of the inflow of FDI and its policy implications in Dongguan. The favourable factors for foreign investors in Dongguan can be categorised under the Dunning's OLI (ownership, locational and internalisation advantages) framework. This paper argues that factors other than policy incentive, such as sub-contractual and pseudo integration, are playing more important roles in at…
Geographical interdependence, international trade and economic dynamics: The Chinese and German solar energy industries
The trajectories of the German and Chinese photovoltaic industries differ significantly yet are strongly interdependent. Germany has seen a rapid growth in market demand and a strong increase in production, especially in the less developed eastern half of the country. Chinese growth has been export driven. These contrasting trajectories reflect the roles of market creation, investment and credit and the drivers of innovation and competitiveness. …
Geography, trade and regional development: The role of wage costs, exchange rates and currency/capital movements
Existing theories of geographical specialization and trade can be classified into four 15 groups: supply-side; demand-side; endogenous growth and institutional models. In the recent past, economic geographers have paid little attention to earlier regional economic analysis and concentrated for the most part on detailed examination of production structures, the chains linking upstream and downstream activities into production and value networks, c…
Competitive dynamics of lead firms and their systems suppliers in the automotive industry
Lead firms play a dominant role in the governance structure of conventional global production network (GPN) analyses but this framework is not fully applicable in sectors where (new) regulations, technologies and subsequent market changes have a disruptive effect on its governance structure. This paper proposes an analytical framework to examine how disruptive effects of industrial megatrends in forms of new regulations and technologies and the s…
Strategic coupling, path creation and diversification: Oil-related development in the ‘Straits Region’ since 1959
The Locational Distribution of Foreign Banks in China: A Disaggregated Analysis
10.1080/00343401003614282
Digital platforms and the spatial transformation of urban villages in southern China: A case for platform-urban villagism
10.1080/02723638.2024.2359308
Hybrid governance of joint ventures in transitional economies: The case of Guangzhou Automobile Group in China
The conventional approach to examining firm-to-firm governance is unable to disentangle the complexity of strategies and the interplay between different actors with their corresponding rules and routines embedded within an institutional environment where the state plays as a key equity partner in joint ventures (JVs) in transitional economies. This paper proposes an analytical framework of hybrid governance to explain how an alignment of mutual i…
Efficiency of logistics land use: The case of Yangtze River Economic Belt in China, 2000–2017
Chinese state-owned commercial banks in reform: Inefficient and Yet Credible and Functional
After the initial public offerings of state-owned commercial banks (SOCBs) in 2005–2010, the transformation of the property structure blurred the conventional boundaries between public and private property in China while the state continued to play an important role in the regulation and operation of this 'hybrid property': the mixed public-private ownership structure adopted for previously wholly SOCBs. It is could be that the perceived lending …
Digital Platform, Spatial-Digital Fix, and the Reconfiguration of Apparel Production Networks
This article proposes an analytical framework of spatial-digital fix to explain how emerging online platform retailers utilize digital technologies to fix their crises in backward and forward value chains—both digitally and spatially—and their subsequent positive and negative impacts on various actors in production and distribution networks. By applying the analytical framework on Shein (an emerging online fast fashion retailer originally based i…
Online Fashion Retailing and Retail Geography: The Blogshop Phenomenon in S ingapore
This paper examines why blogshops exist in S ingapore and how these unconventional online retailing channels can be extended to bricks and mortar shops. The rise of blogshops is due to a combination of low barriers to entry and the informal institutions that bind the blogshop community for mutual support, and the development of a self‐regulatory regime. Blogshops are spatially embedded and supported by the contextualised network of economic actor…
The Implications of WTO Accession on the Pharmaceutical Industry in China
Given the limited capabilities of R&D and global distribution channels, and the virtual non-existence of patented drugs, the Chinese pharmaceutical industry has little chance to enter the global market of Western prescription drugs and compete with the established global giants head-on. The reality is that they are chasing a moving target and their competitors are becoming bigger and stronger day by day. The substantial reduction of import tariff…
WTO Accession, the Changing Competitiveness of Foreign-financed Firms and Regional Development in Guangdong of Southern China
This paper investigates the changing competitiveness of foreign-financed manufacturing firms and its implications for regional development in Guangdong province of southern China in the run-up to World Trade Organization (WTO) accession. It is argued that transnational corporations (TNCs) and some competitive, large-scale, locally-funded firms in Guangdong will triumph after WTO accession. The crowding-out process of small and medium sized enterp…
Foreign Direct Investment and Investment Environment in Dongguan Municipality of Southern China
Based on 26 case studies, this paper investigates the socio-economic causes of the inflow of FDI and its policy implications in Dongguan. The favourable factors for foreign investors in Dongguan can be categorised under the Dunning's OLI (ownership, locational and internalisation advantages) framework. This paper argues that factors other than policy incentive, such as sub-contractual and pseudo integration, are playing more important roles in at…
The Implications of WTO Accession on the Pharmaceutical Industry in China
Given the limited capabilities of R&D and global distribution channels, and the virtual non-existence of patented drugs, the Chinese pharmaceutical industry has little chance to enter the global market of Western prescription drugs and compete with the established global giants head-on. The reality is that they are chasing a moving target and their competitors are becoming bigger and stronger day by day. The substantial reduction of import tariff…
WTO Accession, the Changing Competitiveness of Foreign-financed Firms and Regional Development in Guangdong of Southern China
This paper investigates the changing competitiveness of foreign-financed manufacturing firms and its implications for regional development in Guangdong province of southern China in the run-up to World Trade Organization (WTO) accession. It is argued that transnational corporations (TNCs) and some competitive, large-scale, locally-funded firms in Guangdong will triumph after WTO accession. The crowding-out process of small and medium sized enterp…
Hybrid property, path dependence, market segmentation and financial exclusion: The case of the banking industry in China
This paper investigates the role of the state in the liberalisation of the banking industry in China and the implications for the conventional convergence thesis of market segmentation and financial exclusion. I argue that the usefulness of the convergence thesis is constrained because it does not take region‐specific institutional systems into consideration. This limitation is clearly illustrated by the experience of Chinese banking reforms. As …
How Banks in China make Lending Decisions
Based on interviews conducted in four major Chinese cities, this paper examines the determinants of lending by state-owned commercial banks (SOCBs) to manufacturing firms in China. The conventional relationship banking and transaction lending theories helps explain at least part of the lender–borrower relationship in China. The perceived lending bias against non-state-owned enterprises could actually be reconciled as rational decision-making by S…
Towards global convergence: Emerging economies, the rise of China and western sunset
The financial crisis indicates the underlying bankruptcy of the last of a series of attempts to restore sustained growth in advanced countries since the end of the post-war Golden Age: Italian flexible specialization, Japanese and Rhine-style lean production, the new economy and Anglo-American financialization. Over the same period a number of emerging economies and in particular China have sustained high rates of growth. In the years to come, de…
The Locational Distribution of Foreign Banks in China: A Disaggregated Analysis
10.1080/00343401003614282
Geographical interdependence, international trade and economic dynamics: The Chinese and German solar energy industries
The trajectories of the German and Chinese photovoltaic industries differ significantly yet are strongly interdependent. Germany has seen a rapid growth in market demand and a strong increase in production, especially in the less developed eastern half of the country. Chinese growth has been export driven. These contrasting trajectories reflect the roles of market creation, investment and credit and the drivers of innovation and competitiveness. …
Geography, trade and regional development: The role of wage costs, exchange rates and currency/capital movements
Existing theories of geographical specialization and trade can be classified into four 15 groups: supply-side; demand-side; endogenous growth and institutional models. In the recent past, economic geographers have paid little attention to earlier regional economic analysis and concentrated for the most part on detailed examination of production structures, the chains linking upstream and downstream activities into production and value networks, c…
Rural banking in China: Geographically accessible but still financially excluded
Rural banking in China: geographically accessible but still financially excluded? Regional Studies. Based on the distribution patterns of rural credit cooperatives in about 2200 counties in 2009, this paper examines two aspects of financial exclusion in rural China after the restructuring of the banking industry. Despite the state's efforts to ensure financial inclusion in rural areas, poor farmers could be spatially included while still being de…
The operation of Global Production Networks (GPNs) 2.0 and methodological constraints
Online Fashion Retailing and Retail Geography: The Blogshop Phenomenon in S ingapore
This paper examines why blogshops exist in S ingapore and how these unconventional online retailing channels can be extended to bricks and mortar shops. The rise of blogshops is due to a combination of low barriers to entry and the informal institutions that bind the blogshop community for mutual support, and the development of a self‐regulatory regime. Blogshops are spatially embedded and supported by the contextualised network of economic actor…
Comparative Advantage
Comparative advantage is the capacity of an agent, a region, or a country to produce a specific commodity or provide a service at a lower opportunity cost over another agent, region, or country. It is one of the fundamental concepts in international economics and is normally used to support free trade and pertinent policy agendas in the Washington Consensus. Heterodox economists and neo‐Marxist social scientists, however, argue that empirical evi…
Firm Foundation and Growth
The firm is an intermediate agent to reduce the transaction costs incurred in dealing with individual economic actors. The firm acts as a nexus of contracts to allow transactions to be internalized and coordinated efficiently in the circular flow of production and consumption. Economic geographers highlight the interlinked relationships between institutions (the formal rules and regulations and informal norms) and industrial practices, and how th…
Local/Global Production Systems
Production systems incorporate different production stages based on research and development, product design, the exploration of raw materials and minerals, and the manufacture of parts and components, which lead to the final assembly of a product before it is distributed and eventually sold to consumers. The relative power relationships between the networks of firms in various stages of production and their specific locations can have a profound…
Trade, FDI , and Industrial Development
International trade and foreign direct investment are regarded as the catalysts for industrial and regional development. The ownership‐location‐internalization paradigm explains the rationales for the patterns of foreign direct investment, while the neoclassical international trade model hypothesizes that free trade promotes industrial development and reduces regional disparity across space. Augmented with the new trade theory and new growth mode…
Flexible Specialization
Flexible specialization is the phenomenon of a closely linked network of firms engaging in the production and distribution of nonstandard, specialized products to cater for ever‐changing consumer demands. The transformation from the mass production of standardized products under Fordism to the volume production of nonstandardized products under flexible specialization illustrates how different forms of production organization can shape the charac…
Rural banking in China: A case of centralization
Four types of banking institutions responded differently to the drive to centralize Chinese rural banking operations. In 2009 city commercial and market-oriented banks had a higher density of outlets in economically developed than in less developed counties, as expected, while rural banking institutions had an unexpectedly higher density in non-agricultural than in agriculture-based counties. Circumstantial evidence suggests that the wholly state…
Made in China 2025’: The development of a new energy vehicle industry in China
This paper examines how the state can facilitate the establishment of a domestic production network in new energy vehicles (NEVs), from the making of electric vehicle batteries and battery management systems to the manufacturing of NEVs. The case of China illustrates how a non-firm actor was able to create the largest NEV market in the world by implementing proactive policies for market creation and new industrial regulations for cost and range p…
Efficiency of logistics land use: The case of Yangtze River Economic Belt in China, 2000–2017
Chinese state-owned commercial banks in reform: Inefficient and Yet Credible and Functional
After the initial public offerings of state-owned commercial banks (SOCBs) in 2005–2010, the transformation of the property structure blurred the conventional boundaries between public and private property in China while the state continued to play an important role in the regulation and operation of this 'hybrid property': the mixed public-private ownership structure adopted for previously wholly SOCBs. It is could be that the perceived lending …
Pro-active regional policy and the relocation of manufacturing firms: A case study of state-led industrial relocation in Guangdong, China
To contribute to the debate on the importance of state vis-à-vis inter-firm competition in regional development, this paper examines a representative dataset of the relocation of manufacturing firms in Guangdong province of China with multinomial logistic regression models. To improve the competitiveness of manufacturing in the Pearl River Delta, the Guangdong government implemented pro-active policies to encourage the relocation of existing manu…
Economic geographies of Asian international financial centers: A sympathetic critique
Through a comprehensive review of economic geography studies on Asian international financial centers (IFCs) published from 2009, this paper aims to provide a sympathetic critique of the key research trajectories of financial geographies and to outline research gaps where economic geographers could contribute to the relevant literature. Economic geographers have identified a prominent change in the geographies of the international finance industr…
Strategic coupling, path creation and diversification: Oil-related development in the ‘Straits Region’ since 1959
Hybrid governance of joint ventures in transitional economies: The case of Guangzhou Automobile Group in China
The conventional approach to examining firm-to-firm governance is unable to disentangle the complexity of strategies and the interplay between different actors with their corresponding rules and routines embedded within an institutional environment where the state plays as a key equity partner in joint ventures (JVs) in transitional economies. This paper proposes an analytical framework of hybrid governance to explain how an alignment of mutual i…
Economics (29 works) · Business (25 works) · China (18 works) · Geography (15 works) · Economic geography (12 works) · Industrial organization (11 works) · Political science (11 works) · Finance (9 works) · Global trade and economics (9 works) · Global trade, sustainability, and social impact (9 works)