Personal Contacts, Subcontracting Linkages, and Development in the Hong Kong-Zhujiang Delta Region

Abstract

This paper examines the locational structure and economic consequences of Hong Kong's production subcontracting activities in the Zhujiang Delta, China. Based on a comprehensive investigation of firms in the three major Hong Kong industries, I found that the subcontracting activities from the territory were widely distributed in the Delta, with Shenzhen, Dongguan, and Guangzhou as

When do formal control and trust matter? A context-based analysis of the effects on marketing channel relationships in China

“…Granovetter (1985) demonstrate the robust effect of social embeddedness on economic actions, and relevant research confirms these findings for industrial districts (Leung, 1993;Lazerson, 1995), marketing channels (Moorman, Zaltman, & Deshpande, 1992), immigrant enterprises (Portes & Sensenbrenner, 1993), entrepreneurship (Larson, 1992), lending relationships (Abolafia, 1996;Podolny, 1994), location decisions (Romo & Schwartz, 1995), acquisitions (Palmer, Bard, Zhou, & Soysal, 1995), and organizational adaptations (Baum & Oliver, 1992;Uzzi, 1996).…”

Growth of Tertiary Sector in China's Large Cities

“…Second, the south part of China was earlier than the north in the sequence of open-door policies (Gong, 1995). Cities in the south not only benefitted from the manufacturing jobs decentralized from Hong Kong and Taiwan (Leung, 1993;Sit, 2000) and gained in secondary employment as shown in Figure 3, but also attracted more FDI and became more competitive than those in the north. To some extent, the secondary employment in southern cities grew at the cost of the north.…”

Theorizing Economic Geographies of Asia

“…These realities, however, differ from one historical moment to another and from one geographic setting to another. For example, whereas studies of Latin America have given rise to dependency theory, social science studies of Asia have similarly generated many important theoretical insights, some of which have been followed up in the recent literature on economic geography: (1) the flying geese hypothesis (HartLandsberg and Burkett 1998; Edgington and Hayter 2000); (2) the new international division of labor (Frobel, Heinrichs, and Kreye 1980;Henderson 1989); (3) the developmental state (Douglass 1994;Clark and Kim 1995;Brohman 1996;B.-G. Park 1998;Yeung 1999;Hsu and Cheng 2002); (4) social capital (Leung 1993;Hsing 1998;Yeung 1998c;Olds 2001a); and, more recently, (5) transnationalism (Mitchell 1995;Olds and Yeung 1999;Ley 1999;Hsu and Saxenian 2000;Yeoh and Chang 2001;Zhou and Tseng 2001;G. C. S. Lin 2002a;Ma and Cartier 2003).…”

“…More recently, geographic studies of transnational business activities and transnationalism represent a significant attempt to bring grounded theories of economic geographies of Asia back into mainstream economic geography (Leung 1993;Mitchell 1995;Yeung 1997;Zhou 1998;Hsu and Saxenian 2000;Olds 2001a). In particular, this body of literature on economic geography has managed to blend into its theoretical framework two important ingredients-a special blend that is well grounded in the Asian context.…”