Abstract
In recent years, a great deal of research in economic sociology, political economy, international studies, and economic geography has focused on the globalization, governance, and rapidly changing geographies of global commodity chains (GCCs).
Zhu, S. and J. Pickles. 2014. “Bring in, Go up, Go West, Go Out: Upgrading, Regionalisation and Delocalisation in China’s Apparel Production Networks.” Journal of Contemporary Asia, 44 (1): 36–63 (full article reused with some minor modifications).
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Notes
- 1.
The maps in the chapter are based on firm-level data derived from the annual China Industry Economy Statistical Yearbook.
- 2.
China Daily, February 29, 2012, ‘Chinese Migrant Workers’ Wages up 21% Last Year’. Retrieved on February 29, 2012 from: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2012-02/29/content_14724299.htm.
- 3.
Global Textiles, December 1, 2004, ‘The Appreciation of RMB Has Generated Great Impacts on Textiles.’ Retrieved on August 21, 2011 from: http://www.tnc.com.cn/news/detail/4/3/d43224.html.
- 4.
First Financial Daily, March 27, 2008, ‘60% Textile and Apparel Enterprises Operate with Profit Margin as Low as 0.62%’. Retrieved on August 8, 2011 from: http://mnc.people.com.cn/GB/7049933.html.
- 5.
Textile and Apparel Weekly, February 22, 2008, ‘Textile Industry: How to Deal with Anti-dumping Investigations?’. Retrieved on August 21, 2011 from: http://www.cwta.org.cn/news080222b.htm.
- 6.
Longitudinal analysis of industrial employment in textiles and apparel has to take into account the administrative change between 1988 and 2007 when Chongqing was upgraded to a centrally administered municipality in 1997, adding an additional administrative region to the 30 spatial units that existed before 1997.
- 7.
Go West here refers to one general tendency to expand or relocate from the Pearl River Delta (PRD), Yangtze River Delta (YRD), and Shandong Province to other lower cost regions, including intra-provincial shifting of production (e.g., to the outskirts of Guangdong and west across the Pearl River). This policy also covers the sub-contracting and outsourcing of production to the informal sector and SMEs in less-developed areas inside China as firms attempt to lower their costs. Also within what we refer to as Go West the specific locational patterns of individual firms may, of course, be more complex. Besides these general trends, there are also reasons for factories in PRD to move to YRD or Jiangxi (Go North), while some factories prefer to relocate within or near to their existing locations.
- 8.
Hongdou Group Website, June 7, 2010, ‘From Cocoon to Butterfly: Hongdou’s Road to Upgrading’. Retrieved on November 25, 2010 from: http://www.hongdou.com/newsshow.asp?news_id=1306.
- 9.
BMU Service, January 2008, ‘An Overview of PRC's New Labor Contract Law’. Retrieved on November 14, 2010 from: http://www.bmuconsulting.com/userfiles/2008_01.pdf.
- 10.
China’s CSR standard, CSC9000T, so far only applies to the textile and apparel industry (hence the ‘T’).
- 11.
Karin Buhmann, July 13, 2008, ‘Corporate Social Responsibility—A China Approach’. Retrieved on November 14, 2010 from: http://barha.asiaportal.info/node/923.
- 12.
Responsible Supply Chain Association Website, Retrieved on November 14, 2010 from: http://www.csc9000.org.cn/en/.
- 13.
Karin Buhmann, July 13, 2008, ‘Corporate Social Responsibility—A China Approach’. Retrieved on November 14, 2010 from: http://barha.asiaportal.info/node/923.
- 14.
The government has also actively encouraged and, in some cases, compelled textile and apparel enterprises to reduce their operating costs and their environmental impacts by moving from polluted coastal provinces to inland areas closer to their cotton and wool input suppliers and to extensive and low-cost regional labor markets. Central government inducements have been particularly strong in urging textile manufacturers to move to Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, Ningxia, and Qinghai, silk production to Sichuan, Guangxi, and Yunnan, and fiber-dependent industries to Henan and Hubei. Large successful export-oriented apparel firms were also targeted in this endeavor. In 2008, the China Chamber of Commerce for Importers and Exporters of Textiles organized a trip to visit the Western provinces for operators of more than 120 export-oriented textile and garment enterprises, including the firms Silique from Guangdong, Shenda from Shanghai, and Weiqiao from Shandong. (China Wool Textile Association, April 2008), ‘Great Industrial Relocation’. Accessed August 10, 2011. http://www.cwta.org.cn/news080423e.htm.
- 15.
The rise of China’s domestic market for manufactured goods is a crucial driver of many of these changes, allowing firms to manage export market risk by leveraging domestic markets, by establishing domestic brands for that market, and for selling into a local market that saves on the logistical and tariff costs of increasingly competitive and low-cost export markets (Henderson and Nadvi 2011; Kaplinsky and Farooki 2010).
- 16.
China Apparel (EFU), September 14, 2009, ‘Overview of Chinese Apparel Industrial Relocation’. Retrieved on November 25, 2010 from: http://www.efu.com.cn/data/2009/2009-09-14/281164.shtml.
- 17.
Xinhua News, December 10, 2009, ‘Industrial Relocation Spur Economic Development in Northern Jiangsu’. Retrieved on November 25, 2010 from: http://invest.people.com.cn/GB/75601/10557045.html.
- 18.
China Apparel (EFU), 14 September, 2009, ‘Overview of Chinese Apparel Industrial Relocation’. Retrieved on November 25, 2010 from: http://www.efu.com.cn/data/2009/2009-09-14/281164.shtml.
- 19.
See Pickles and Woods (1989) for examples of an earlier round of the Go Out policy pursued by Taiwan enterprises in the 1970s and 1980s.
- 20.
China Textile and Economic Information (CETI), September 24, 2009, ‘Textile and Apparel Industrial Relocation’. Retrieved on November 25, 2010 from: http://news.ctei.gov.cn/200075.htm.
- 21.
China Apparel (EFU), September 14, 2009, ‘Overview of Chinese Apparel Industrial Relocation’. Retrieved on November 25, 2010 from: http://www.efu.com.cn/data/2009/2009-09-14/281164.shtml.
- 22.
Fibre2Fashion News Desk, China, February 5, 2007, ‘China: Hongdou Garment to set up production base in Cambodia’. Retrieved on November 25, 2010 from: http://www.fibre2fashion.com/news/silks-news/newsdetails.aspx?news_id=30193.
- 23.
China Apparel (EFU), September 14, 2009, ‘Overview of Chinese Apparel Industrial Relocation’. Retrieved on November 25, 2010 from: http://www.efu.com.cn/data/2009/2009-09-14/281164.shtml.
- 24.
Shanghai Overseas Chinese News, May 26, 2008, ‘Cambodia: An Investment Destination for Chinese Textile and Apparel Firms’. Retrieved on November 25, 2010 from: http://www.cwta.org.cn/news080526006.htm.
- 25.
Jie Liu. February 2009. Bosideng eyes mergers to beat slump. China Daily. Retrieved on March 1, 2012 from: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/business/2009-02/24/content_7505574.htm.
- 26.
‘According to the CNTAC, there were 48 major apparel clusters in China. Each of these clusters specialises in the production on one or more textile or apparel products…. [as of 2005] All of these [major] clusters are located along the coastal provinces, namely Zhejiang, Guangdong, Jiangsu, Fujian, Shangdong and Hebei’ (Li and Fung 2006). As of 2009, the number of firms with revenue 5 million Yuan or greater is 18,265 (apparel).
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Zhu, S., Pickles, J., He, C. (2017). Bring In, Go Up, Go West, Go Out: Upgrading, Regionalization, and Delocalization in China’s Apparel Production Networks. In: Geographical Dynamics and Firm Spatial Strategy in China. Springer Geography. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-53601-8_2
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