Intrametropolitan FDI firm location in Guangzhou, China

Abstract

As a novel type of industrial establishment in the era of globalization, foreign direct investment (FDI) has become a new driving force in the shaping of urban structure. To understand the current worldwide urban restructuring process, the location behaviour of FDI ®rms should be fully investigated. But few empirical studies on industrial location have been carried out at the intrametropolitan scale, probably due to the lack of disaggregated data and appropriate models. This study geo-references FDI ®rms by their postal codes and captures site attributes through cross-referencing ®rm distribution with other spatial coverage such as population statistics, land uses, and designated development zones. This paper argues for a Poisson and negative binomial model of ®rm location based on count-data and tests such a ®rm location model using the case of metropolitan Guangzhou, PRC. Results, in contrast to previous studies at the national and regional scales of this country, con®rm that, at least statistically, intra-urban FDI ®rm location in the context of a transitional economy presents regularities that are explainable according to`rational' economic considerations of site suitability.

Industrial agglomeration of Hong Kong and Taiwanese manufacturing investment in China: a town-level analysis in Dongguan

“…Following the work of Ellison and Glaeser (1997), a lot of empirical studies have been conducted in various countries and the overall cut-off value put forward by Ellison and Glaeser (1997) has also been tested across a lot of regions and countries as well as covered different scale of areas. However, in China, although a lot of techniques have been used to examine the concentration of industrial activities, few empirical studies have been primarily based on the EG index and few studies have been done to concentrate on the intra-city distribution of FDI (Wu 1999(Wu , 2000Wu and Radbone 2005). The EG index, although powerful, also suffers from some drawbacks.…”

The spatial distribution of industries in transitional China: A study of Beijing

“…Local governments construct the latter (and give them preferential tax status) because they want manufacturing enterprises to relocate from the inner city to the suburbs, instead of moving out of the city. Current studies prove that this strategy works to the extent that these development zones act as an important factor in the industrial location in the intra-city areas (Huang & Wei, 2014;Wei, Leung, Li, & Pan, 2008;Wu, 1999;Wu & Radbone, 2005), attracting a large number of enterprises and dramatically changing the industrial spatial pattern of Chinese cities (Shi & Huang, 2012;Yeup & Zhang, 2008). Addressing the Beijing context more specifically, Feng, Zhou, and Wu (2008) consider the development zones to be a significant factor in the industrial urbanization of the capital.…”

Computer Science & Information Technology (CS & IT)

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