Shengjun Zhu
Biographic Data
| ID | 3711246 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Shengjun Zhu |
| GIVEN NAMES | Shengjun |
| FAMILY NAME | Zhu |
| SIGNATURE | ZHU S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Peking University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1033-4384 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 44 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 217 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 44 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Variety of external knowledge and industrial upgrading: Evidence from Chinese semiconductor industry
Asia in the transforming global economy
Chasing the sun: How does policy-induced local demand promote the spatio-temporal evolution of China’s solar photovoltaic industry
Political rotation of city leaders and unrelated diversification in China
Recent studies stressed that external actors can help regions diversify into unrelated economic activities, but none has examined the role of the mobility of political leaders. Using micro-level data on China’s exports, investments, and city leaders, we find that, compared with leaders promoted locally, leaders who are rotated across cities introduce more unrelated activities, which further leads to better economic performance. Like other externa…
Public procurement, institutional distance and cross-regional subsidiary location choice
Birthplace diversity of immigrants and technological novelty: Unpacking the internal structure of diversity
Administrative decentralisation strategy and upgrading firm exports: Empirical evidence from China’s ‘counties power expansion’ reform
The quality of exported products is a key indicator of a country’s firms’ international competitiveness. Using data from Chinese industrial firms and customs from 2000 to 2012, this paper examines the impact of the ‘counties power expansion’ reform on the quality of exported products. The findings indicate that as county-level governments gain broader administrative powers, they encounter increased pressure for economic growth, leading to two mai…
Degree of technological relatedness, firm heterogeneity, and survival condition: Evidence from emerging high-tech firms in the Pearl River Delta, China
Global linkages and local institutions: The role of imports and MNEs in the regional diversification into complex products in China
This paper explores the role of product portfolios of domestic imports and foreign firms in the regional diversification of domestic firms to new exports. We find that regional diversification is favoured by product relatedness to the product portfolios of both imports and foreign firms. The positive effects from imports increase when diversifying to more complex products, while the effects from foreign firms remain relatively unchanged. Local em…
Reducing administrative barriers: Evidence from China's county-to-district reform on export product quality
Network dynamics and institutional context in China's film industry
Existing literature has explored how different firm behaviours and strategies in different institutional contexts result in variegation in network structures. Based on those studies, this paper first examines how networks have been shaped by China's institutional transition in general and the process of marketisation in particular. Furthermore, we stress that the rise of networks in China's film industry has in return boosted the development of p…
Different Material Footprint Trends between China and the World in 2007-2012 Explained by Construction- and Manufacturing-associated Investment
What can evolutionary economic geography learn from global value chain and global production network research on developing and emerging economies
Although evolutionary economic geography (EEG) and global production network (GPN) and global value chain (GVC) research into regional industrial restructuring and development have developed in parallel and with little mutual engagement, they provide important complementary insights. This article concentrates on what the EEG approach can learn from the GVC/GPN approach by focusing on extra-regional linkages, institutional contexts and firm hetero…
Temporary extra-regional linkages and export product and market diversification
While considerable attention has been paid towards how some long-lasting extra-regional linkages such as foreign direct investments facilitate interregional knowledge transfer, less is known about the role of temporary extra-regional linkages formulated via trade fairs. This paper seeks to fill this gap by focusing on the China Import and Export Fair and examining the relationship between temporary extra-regional linkages forged by trade fairs an…
Institutions, Chain Governance and the Predicament of Local Upgrading: A Case Study of Hangzhou's Mobile Game Industry
This article focuses on one of China's emerging creative clusters – Hangzhou's mobile game industry – and investigates the various adaptations this cluster has undergone, as well as the mechanisms underlying the industrial and geographical dynamics within the cluster. Specifically, it examines the power asymmetry of governance in the cluster, paying attention to how chain governance has been shaped by both local and national institutional context…
Diversity in brokerage cities: The evolution of urban positionality in China’s financial system
The competitiveness of financial centres increasingly hinges on their capability at brokering financial flows. Though existing studies have paid attention to the rise and fall of some financial brokerage cities (FBCs), less is known about how such dynamics of FBCs have been shaped by the structure of financial networks and the interactions among FBCs. Taking China’s financial network as an example, we consider not only the interactions between FB…
Strong Links and Weak Links: How Do Unrelated Industries Survive in anUnfriendlyEnvironment
The evolutionary economic geography strand’s emphasis on related diversification as a path for economic development generally leads to greater territorial polarization: places already at the vanguard of production and with more advanced sectors tend to perform better, while less developed, often peripheral places remain stuck in low competitive equilibria. More recently, literature reveals cases where countries/regions may deviate and jump into n…
Export structures, income inequality and urban-rural divide in China
Inter-city housing purchase: A case of China’s Yangtze River Delta region
Consistencies and inconsistencies in urban governance and development
Inter- and intra-city networks: How networks are shaping China’s film industry
While existing studies have mapped out various networks with some visualization techniques, we move one step forward by examining if city/firm performance is dependent not only on intra-city networks, as proposed by the clustering literature, but also on inter-city networks, the core concept in the world city network literature. Our second contribution is to investigate the complementarity between inter- and intra-city networks, and how it could …
Good neighbors, bad neighbors: Local knowledge spillovers, regional institutions and firm performance in China
The upgrading framework in the apparel industry literature: Insights from apparel firms in Ningbo, China
Recent literature has problematized the limits of deeply held assumptions about linear, unidirectional upgrading trajectories in global value chains (GVCs). As firm and chain trajectories and sources of upgrading have changed in recent years, GVC analysis has adjusted to focus on new emerging actors and new distributions of power within value chains. After a discussion of some limits to the treatment of upgrading in the GVC literature, the paper …
Proximity Matters: Inter‐Regional Knowledge Spillovers and Regional Industrial Diversification in China
The effects of knowledge spillovers from neighbouring regions on regional industrial diversification should not be overlooked. Here we are referring to not only intra‐industry knowledge spillovers from neighbouring regions, but also the spread of knowledge from related industries in neighbouring regions. This paper also develops an analytical framework that pays more attention to the role of institutional proximity between regions and how it is a…
Learning from yourself or learning from neighbours: Knowledge spillovers, institutional context and firm upgrading
Using a firm–product-level data set on China’s exports during the period 2000–11, we compare the impacts of intra- and inter-firm knowledge spillovers on the emergence of new, more sophisticated products at the firm level. Empirical results indicate that firm diversification is dependent on both intra- and inter-firm knowledge spillovers, though the effect of the former is much greater. More importantly, intra-firm knowledge spillovers are one ke…
Developing by borrowing? Inter-jurisdictional competition, land finance and local debt accumulation in China
Although the investment-oriented development model for economic growth adopted by Chinese governments has generated spectacular results, the risks of debt-financed urbanisation and economic development have recently become evident in mounting local debts that are undermining the financial system, triggering concerns with respect to local governments’ indebtedness, financial stability and sovereign risk in China. In this paper, we portray the unev…
Bring In, Go Up, Go West, Go Out: Upgrading, Regionalisation and Delocalisation in China's Apparel Production Networks
The rise of China's export-oriented apparel industry since the 1990s has been driven largely by global sourcing practices intent on capturing the cost advantages of a development model predicated, in part, on unskilled or semi-skilled migratory labour flows, linking western and central labour pools to coastal production sites. Until recently, the dominance of this model has fuelled growth in low-wage employment in the coastal regions and has prov…
How to jump further and catch up? Path-breaking in an uneven industry space
Recent studies have argued that regional diversification emerges as a path-dependent process. Developed countries that industrialize do so first from core areas in an uneven industry space and have more opportunities to jump to new related industries and sustain economic growth than do developing countries that jump from peripheral areas. Can developing countries/regions jump further to break these path-dependent trajectories? Based on China’s ex…
Going green or going away: Environmental regulation, economic geography and firms’ strategies in China’s pollution-intensive industries
Geographical dynamics and industrial relocation: Spatial strategies of apparel firms in Ningbo, China
China’s emergence as a key exporter to the world has relied on low-wage and unskilled or semi-skilled labor and industrial clustering. The apparel industry exemplifies this export-oriented development model. Production and employment have become heavily concentrated in the coastal regions of east and southeast China. With growth in other sectors, prices, land costs, wages, and competitive pressures have all risen. This paper examines the diverse …
State Regulation, Economic Reform and Worker Rights: The Contingent Effects of China's Labour Contract Law
In 2007/2008 the Labour Contract Law was introduced and enacted in China. Responses to the law have varied enormously. For many, it represented a major change in the conditions under which workers and employers can enter into contracts and, as a result, it has been seen as an important step in empowering workers to shape their conditions of work. For others, the law lacked teeth and was not implemented. In practice, the law has had different effe…
Turkishization of a Chinese apparel firm: Fast fashion, regionalisation and the shift from global supplier to new end markets: Figure 1
This paper cautions against fetishising geographical proximity in analyses of fast fashion apparel production networks. Using a detailed case study of one former state-owned domestically oriented Chinese apparel producer, we show how initial advantages as a large low-cost exporter have—with increased costs and competition from southeast Asia—led to deepened relations with, and learning from, its Turkish partners to develop a cost competitive expo…
Institutions, Chain Governance and the Predicament of Local Upgrading: A Case Study of Hangzhou's Mobile Game Industry
This article focuses on one of China's emerging creative clusters – Hangzhou's mobile game industry – and investigates the various adaptations this cluster has undergone, as well as the mechanisms underlying the industrial and geographical dynamics within the cluster. Specifically, it examines the power asymmetry of governance in the cluster, paying attention to how chain governance has been shaped by both local and national institutional context…
Learning from yourself or learning from neighbours: Knowledge spillovers, institutional context and firm upgrading
Using a firm–product-level data set on China’s exports during the period 2000–11, we compare the impacts of intra- and inter-firm knowledge spillovers on the emergence of new, more sophisticated products at the firm level. Empirical results indicate that firm diversification is dependent on both intra- and inter-firm knowledge spillovers, though the effect of the former is much greater. More importantly, intra-firm knowledge spillovers are one ke…
Inter- and intra-city networks: How networks are shaping China’s film industry
While existing studies have mapped out various networks with some visualization techniques, we move one step forward by examining if city/firm performance is dependent not only on intra-city networks, as proposed by the clustering literature, but also on inter-city networks, the core concept in the world city network literature. Our second contribution is to investigate the complementarity between inter- and intra-city networks, and how it could …
How do environmental regulations affect industrial dynamics? Evidence from China's pollution-intensive industries
The upgrading framework in the apparel industry literature: Insights from apparel firms in Ningbo, China
Recent literature has problematized the limits of deeply held assumptions about linear, unidirectional upgrading trajectories in global value chains (GVCs). As firm and chain trajectories and sources of upgrading have changed in recent years, GVC analysis has adjusted to focus on new emerging actors and new distributions of power within value chains. After a discussion of some limits to the treatment of upgrading in the GVC literature, the paper …
What matters for regional industrial dynamics in a transitional economy
Recent evolutionary economic geography (EEG) studies have argued that regional diversification emerges as a path-dependent process, as a region often branches into related industries, whereas unrelated industries have a high probability of exiting the region. Based on a firm-level dataset of China’s manufacturing industries during 1998–2008, this paper examines the entry and exit of four-digit industries at the prefectural level, and shows that C…
Institutional Embeddedness and Regional Adaptability and Rigidity in a Chinese Apparel Cluster
In recent years, the flexibilities industrial clusters may offer to firms within them have been questioned as inter‐firm linkages have, in some cases, locked‐in path‐dependent practices and increased economic rigidities. In this sense, the canonical path dependence model has tended to overlook such trajectories of cluster evolution and has not paid as much attention to the ways in which actors can affect path‐dependent processes. In this article,…
Chinese apparel value chains in Europe: Low-end fast fashion, regionalization, and transnational entrepreneurship in Prato, Italy
Focusing on of the Chinese immigrants in the apparel industry in Prato, Italy, the paper shows that the emergence of pronto moda (the apparel industry in Prato) is a unique response to the rise of fast fashion in Europe. Bridging the literature of regionalization and value chain studies with the literature of transnational entrepreneurship in economic geography, the author shows that the competitiveness of pronto moda lies in both production team…
Global, regional and local: New firm formation and spatial restructuring in China’s apparel industry
Diversity in brokerage cities: The evolution of urban positionality in China’s financial system
The competitiveness of financial centres increasingly hinges on their capability at brokering financial flows. Though existing studies have paid attention to the rise and fall of some financial brokerage cities (FBCs), less is known about how such dynamics of FBCs have been shaped by the structure of financial networks and the interactions among FBCs. Taking China’s financial network as an example, we consider not only the interactions between FB…
Strong Links and Weak Links: How Do Unrelated Industries Survive in anUnfriendlyEnvironment
The evolutionary economic geography strand’s emphasis on related diversification as a path for economic development generally leads to greater territorial polarization: places already at the vanguard of production and with more advanced sectors tend to perform better, while less developed, often peripheral places remain stuck in low competitive equilibria. More recently, literature reveals cases where countries/regions may deviate and jump into n…
Inter-city housing purchase: A case of China’s Yangtze River Delta region
Consistencies and inconsistencies in urban governance and development
Evolution of Export Product Space in China: Technological Relatedness, National/Local Governance and Regional Industrial Diversification
Regions tend to develop new products that are related to pre‐existing industrial structure. This stresses the critical role of relatedness in regional industrial diversification. Governments can also strongly affect the evolution of regional industrial structure by using a variety of industrial policies. Based on China's custom product level data, this study explores the evolution of China's export product space during 2000–2011. Econometric anal…
Firm Dynamics, Institutional Context, And Regional Inequality Of Productivity In China
This paper focuses on the issue of regional inequality in China. It seeks to move away from focusing on the relationship between factor accumulation and regional inequality towards an analytical framework that concentrates upon the ways in which regional inequality has articulated with factor productivity and firm dynamics, while acknowledging the role of institutional context. Based on one database on firm‐specific economic and financial variabl…
Degree of technological relatedness, firm heterogeneity, and survival condition: Evidence from emerging high-tech firms in the Pearl River Delta, China
New economic geographies of manufacturing in China
Since the early 2000s, the "race to the bottom" that typified the "China price" and the model of export-oriented industrialization has been challenged by various factors, triggering another round of industrial restructuring and producing new economic geographies of production and employment in China. This paper provides a review of existing research on the new economic geographies of China's manufacturing industries. In doing so, we seek to show …
Geographical dynamics and industrial relocation: Spatial strategies of apparel firms in Ningbo, China
China’s emergence as a key exporter to the world has relied on low-wage and unskilled or semi-skilled labor and industrial clustering. The apparel industry exemplifies this export-oriented development model. Production and employment have become heavily concentrated in the coastal regions of east and southeast China. With growth in other sectors, prices, land costs, wages, and competitive pressures have all risen. This paper examines the diverse …
Global, regional and local: New firm formation and spatial restructuring in China’s apparel industry
Chinese apparel value chains in Europe: Low-end fast fashion, regionalization, and transnational entrepreneurship in Prato, Italy
Focusing on of the Chinese immigrants in the apparel industry in Prato, Italy, the paper shows that the emergence of pronto moda (the apparel industry in Prato) is a unique response to the rise of fast fashion in Europe. Bridging the literature of regionalization and value chain studies with the literature of transnational entrepreneurship in economic geography, the author shows that the competitiveness of pronto moda lies in both production team…
Going green or going away: Environmental regulation, economic geography and firms’ strategies in China’s pollution-intensive industries
Bring In, Go Up, Go West, Go Out: Upgrading, Regionalisation and Delocalisation in China's Apparel Production Networks
The rise of China's export-oriented apparel industry since the 1990s has been driven largely by global sourcing practices intent on capturing the cost advantages of a development model predicated, in part, on unskilled or semi-skilled migratory labour flows, linking western and central labour pools to coastal production sites. Until recently, the dominance of this model has fuelled growth in low-wage employment in the coastal regions and has prov…
Turkishization of a Chinese apparel firm: Fast fashion, regionalisation and the shift from global supplier to new end markets: Figure 1
This paper cautions against fetishising geographical proximity in analyses of fast fashion apparel production networks. Using a detailed case study of one former state-owned domestically oriented Chinese apparel producer, we show how initial advantages as a large low-cost exporter have—with increased costs and competition from southeast Asia—led to deepened relations with, and learning from, its Turkish partners to develop a cost competitive expo…
State Regulation, Economic Reform and Worker Rights: The Contingent Effects of China's Labour Contract Law
In 2007/2008 the Labour Contract Law was introduced and enacted in China. Responses to the law have varied enormously. For many, it represented a major change in the conditions under which workers and employers can enter into contracts and, as a result, it has been seen as an important step in empowering workers to shape their conditions of work. For others, the law lacked teeth and was not implemented. In practice, the law has had different effe…
Industrial Linkage
Industrial linkage can be broadly defined as the contacts and flows of information and/or materials between two or more industrial sectors or firms. The concept is widely used in industrial and economic geography to portray interfirm interdependence. A firm's linkages can be divided into: backward linkage, forward linkage, and sideways linkage. Industrial linkages are a powerful sustainer of industrial agglomerations, and serve to propel economic…
What matters for regional industrial dynamics in a transitional economy
Recent evolutionary economic geography (EEG) studies have argued that regional diversification emerges as a path-dependent process, as a region often branches into related industries, whereas unrelated industries have a high probability of exiting the region. Based on a firm-level dataset of China’s manufacturing industries during 1998–2008, this paper examines the entry and exit of four-digit industries at the prefectural level, and shows that C…
How to jump further and catch up? Path-breaking in an uneven industry space
Recent studies have argued that regional diversification emerges as a path-dependent process. Developed countries that industrialize do so first from core areas in an uneven industry space and have more opportunities to jump to new related industries and sustain economic growth than do developing countries that jump from peripheral areas. Can developing countries/regions jump further to break these path-dependent trajectories? Based on China’s ex…
Institutional Embeddedness and Regional Adaptability and Rigidity in a Chinese Apparel Cluster
In recent years, the flexibilities industrial clusters may offer to firms within them have been questioned as inter‐firm linkages have, in some cases, locked‐in path‐dependent practices and increased economic rigidities. In this sense, the canonical path dependence model has tended to overlook such trajectories of cluster evolution and has not paid as much attention to the ways in which actors can affect path‐dependent processes. In this article,…
New economic geographies of manufacturing in China
Since the early 2000s, the "race to the bottom" that typified the "China price" and the model of export-oriented industrialization has been challenged by various factors, triggering another round of industrial restructuring and producing new economic geographies of production and employment in China. This paper provides a review of existing research on the new economic geographies of China's manufacturing industries. In doing so, we seek to show …
Industrial Upgrading
The concept of industrial upgrading – making better products, making them more efficiently, or moving into more skilled activities – has often been used in the literature on competitiveness. Four types of upgrading have been identified: process, product, functional, and chain upgrading. Both the cluster approach and the value chain approach highlight the importance of industrial upgrading in order to face increasing competition in the global econ…
Industrial Geography
Industrial geography has traditionally been defined as the study of the spaces, places, and geographical circulation of industry. It is a sub‐branch of economic geography and deals with the spatial arrangement of industrial activities. This entry is organized along a rough time line. After an introduction, the second section seeks to review briefly the main phases of the discipline's historical development from the early twentieth century when in…
How do environmental regulations affect industrial dynamics? Evidence from China's pollution-intensive industries
Developing by borrowing? Inter-jurisdictional competition, land finance and local debt accumulation in China
Although the investment-oriented development model for economic growth adopted by Chinese governments has generated spectacular results, the risks of debt-financed urbanisation and economic development have recently become evident in mounting local debts that are undermining the financial system, triggering concerns with respect to local governments’ indebtedness, financial stability and sovereign risk in China. In this paper, we portray the unev…
Firm Dynamics, Institutional Context, And Regional Inequality Of Productivity In China
This paper focuses on the issue of regional inequality in China. It seeks to move away from focusing on the relationship between factor accumulation and regional inequality towards an analytical framework that concentrates upon the ways in which regional inequality has articulated with factor productivity and firm dynamics, while acknowledging the role of institutional context. Based on one database on firm‐specific economic and financial variabl…
The Principle of Relatedness
Evolution of Export Product Space in China: Technological Relatedness, National/Local Governance and Regional Industrial Diversification
Regions tend to develop new products that are related to pre‐existing industrial structure. This stresses the critical role of relatedness in regional industrial diversification. Governments can also strongly affect the evolution of regional industrial structure by using a variety of industrial policies. Based on China's custom product level data, this study explores the evolution of China's export product space during 2000–2011. Econometric anal…
Good neighbors, bad neighbors: Local knowledge spillovers, regional institutions and firm performance in China
The upgrading framework in the apparel industry literature: Insights from apparel firms in Ningbo, China
Recent literature has problematized the limits of deeply held assumptions about linear, unidirectional upgrading trajectories in global value chains (GVCs). As firm and chain trajectories and sources of upgrading have changed in recent years, GVC analysis has adjusted to focus on new emerging actors and new distributions of power within value chains. After a discussion of some limits to the treatment of upgrading in the GVC literature, the paper …
Proximity Matters: Inter‐Regional Knowledge Spillovers and Regional Industrial Diversification in China
The effects of knowledge spillovers from neighbouring regions on regional industrial diversification should not be overlooked. Here we are referring to not only intra‐industry knowledge spillovers from neighbouring regions, but also the spread of knowledge from related industries in neighbouring regions. This paper also develops an analytical framework that pays more attention to the role of institutional proximity between regions and how it is a…
Learning from yourself or learning from neighbours: Knowledge spillovers, institutional context and firm upgrading
Using a firm–product-level data set on China’s exports during the period 2000–11, we compare the impacts of intra- and inter-firm knowledge spillovers on the emergence of new, more sophisticated products at the firm level. Empirical results indicate that firm diversification is dependent on both intra- and inter-firm knowledge spillovers, though the effect of the former is much greater. More importantly, intra-firm knowledge spillovers are one ke…
Export structures, income inequality and urban-rural divide in China
Inter-city housing purchase: A case of China’s Yangtze River Delta region
Economics (35 works) · Economic geography (32 works) · Business (30 works) · China (29 works) · Geography (21 works) · Political science (19 works) · Regional Economics and Spatial Analysis (19 works) · Industrial organization (17 works) · Global trade and economics (13 works) · Global trade, sustainability, and social impact (13 works)