Manufacturing Paradoxes: Foreign Ownership, Governance, and Value Chains in China’s Light Industries

Cloth without a weaver: power, emergence and institutions across global value chains

“…Consistently across almost all industries -many of them light industries -foreign capital as a share of total assets is substantially lower in upstream sub-industries (such as cotton spinning), and then gradually increases with the highest levels in downstream industries (garments). More surprisingly, the basic pattern of foreign investments does not substantially change over time, during which one might assume Chinese firms would become more competitive, especially in the simplest of light industries (Dallas, 2014). Contrary to expectations, some downstream light consumer goods industries became increasingly dominated by foreign firms between the 1990s and 2000s.…”

“…These compelled Beijing to intervene in reactive ways that influenced the winners and losers of international integration. The following sections illustrate this through three rough, schematic histories of the cotton, wool and silk textile agro-industries, which are more thoroughly detailed elsewhere (Dallas, 2011). Holding technological and economic variables constant, the intra-industry comparison highlights how the emergent structure of foreign firms influenced China's development; at the same time, in all three cases institutions do matter, but not in the consistent or regularized ways that institutionalists might expect international economic forces to be 'domesticated'.…”

Recorded music supply network reconfiguration: the dual effect of digital technology

“…In the power asymmetry view, leading firms control resource allocation, financial and material flows in the network by taking advantage of technology or market knowledge, size or financial capacity (Dallas, 2014). Those powerful players can be located upstream (producer-driven networks), downstream (buyer-driven networks) (Gereffi, 1994;Gereffi, 1999), or in the mid-flow (Dallas, 2014), and are usually found in developed countries, while subordinate firms operate in emerging economies.…”

“…Those powerful players can be located upstream (producer-driven networks), downstream (buyer-driven networks) (Gereffi, 1994;Gereffi, 1999), or in the mid-flow (Dallas, 2014), and are usually found in developed countries, while subordinate firms operate in emerging economies.…”

Function Mechanism & Simulation of “Chain Mode Innovation” Policy in the Optimization and Upgrading of the Industry Structure

“…From a macro perspective, the formation and operation of the global value chain was mainly driven by both aspects of producers and buyers [1]. The former should concentrate on the construction of competitive advantage in the field of manufacturing; the latter should emphasize the expansion of design capacity, brand building and marketing network.…”