Professional Documents
Culture Documents
doi:10.1093/cjres/rsz012
Advance Access publication 5 October 2019
We analyse one of the most important policy experiences for industrial clustering in
Southern China—the Specialised Towns programme—that has transformed some Chinese
clusters into the backbone of global production chains. We offer a long-term, detailed over-
view of the policy programme and of Guangdong’s specialised towns, classifying them as
endogenous or exogenous according to their features, and investigate their contribution to
local growth and rebalancing. This analysis of the Specialised Towns programme contrib-
utes to the international debate on revisiting industrial policy and suggests that the discus-
sion should conceive them as articulated processes to reach long-term societal objectives.
© The Author(s) 2019. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Cambridge Political Economy Society.
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Barbieri et al.
of the province’s growth is its outward orienta- come from the ST of Chenghai (Jankowiak,
tion. In 2017, Guangdong accounted for nearly 2017) and 20% of smartphones manufactured
30% of China’s national exports1 and 15% of its globally every year comes from Dongguan City
total foreign direct investment (FDI).2 It had a (where 93% of the total townships participate
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clusters, the Chinese government restruc- The article is organised as follows. After dis-
tured it to support, drive and accelerate clus- cussing the international literature useful to in-
ters growth (Rubini et al., 2015). terpret the STs’ experience, we describe data
3 . Central role of the Department of Science and methodology. Next, we offer a detailed
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Barbieri et al.
scholars have also warned that without proper key elements, in particular the existence of a
design and implementation, cluster policies community of firms and people giving rise to
might even produce negative consequences the industrial atmosphere (Becattini, 1987). In
(Brakman and van Marrewijk, 2013). Within Guangdong, in fact, clusters often result from
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Industrial policy in China
Hesse-Biber and Johnson, 2015) by using both technologies and upgrading production. They
qualitative and quantitative data. also encourage cooperation among the town’s
To analyse the STs, we built a novel data- firms, private and public engineering centres
base, containing information about the year and public research institutions in innova-
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Barbieri et al.
economy, including industrial production (Di at the centre of Guangdong industrial growth
Tommaso et al., 2013). In the Spark Plan zones, since the beginning of China’s open-door policy
firms could benefit from subsidies and loans (Figure 2(a)) (Zheng et al., 2016).
(Barbieri et al., 2010). Some DSTGG experts The concentration of STs in the PRD re-
realised that most of them tended to specialise flected policymakers’ effort to rationalise this
in specific sectors—a process now known as area’s fast—and often chaotic—growth (Chen,
“one city, one product” (Su and Sun, 2016; 2007; Enright et al., 2005). Such economic ex-
Wang and Yue, 2010), which rests at the foun- pansion must be related with the career incen-
dation of the ST programme. tives given by national rules to local officials.
From 2000 to 2003, the second phase—a Indeed, up to the beginning of the 2000s, local
pilot development of the programme—took officials were mainly promoted according to
place, introduced by two formal documents: their ability to produce economic improve-
“Plan for the ST Technological Innovation: ments (mainly GDP growth) at the local level
Pilot Test” and “Managerial Methods for (Li, 2014). To this aim, local officials often used
the ST Technological Innovation: Pilot Test” transactions in the land market, which indeed
(DSTGG, 2008). Most of the STs recognised in boomed between 1988 and 1992. Land con-
this phase are in the Pearl River Delta (PRD), veyance fees generated by such transactions
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Industrial policy in China
were used for infrastructural financing and to encourage development of lagging areas
upgrading, ending in GDP growth (Ahmad (Barbieri et al., 2012; Sarcina et al., 2014). The
et al., 2018; Cao and Zhao, 2011). Hence, this new STs were established in the so-called Great
phase of the STs programme served the pro- PRD and on the coast and peripheral areas
motion of industrial growth and upgrading, through 2006 (Figure 2(b)), with rural bases and
while rationalising industrial development mountainous territory through 2009 (Figure
(Barbieri et al., 2009). The sectoral specialisa- 2(c)). They had different productive peculi-
tion of these first towns reflected the features of arities, such as being focussed on agriculture-
Guangdong’s—and the PRD’s—manufacturing related, resource-based activities or services
systems at the time, mainly based on low-tech (Figure 3).
production (Figure 3). Some official documents12 highlighted the
In the third phase (2003–2008), the STs pro- double path behind the policy implementa-
gramme extended to some non-PRD cities tion of this phase and recognised the strategic
and, along with upgrading, started to be used value of STs in Guangdong’s development
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Barbieri et al.
100%
5
26 34 56
90%
80%
69
60%
34 96
50%
39
40% 19
13 46
30% 17
6 62
20% 102
46
10% 9
8 17 29
0% 2
2003 2006 2009 2015
(Barbieri et al., 2010; Lin, 2006; Su and Sun, 1. to further decentralise the economic man-
2016). They stressed how provincial and local agement of STs to local authorities;
institutions started to collaborate in clus- 2. to optimise the industrial and urban struc-
tering processes to avoid sectoral overlap and ture of STs;
to coordinate the regional innovation system. 3. to restore public accounts and realise infra-
This is reflected also in the establishment of structural investments;
the Guangdong Provincial ST Development 4. to promote quality upgrading of traditional
Promotion Association (POTIC) (Su and Sun, industries and
2016). Furthermore, many of these documents 5. to increase GDP, innovation potential and,
pointed to the diffusion of good practices re- more generally, competitive capacity (Tsai,
lated to knowledge diffusion and protection and 2013).
territorial branding. Finally, they emphasised
collaboration between local actors and univer- Similar to this is the “One Town, One Institute”
sities and research institutions. initiative (2012), aimed at founding a third-
Since 2008, a fourth phase has begun, with level degree institution in each township (Su
a new emphasis on endogenous growth and and Sun, 2016). Finally, the initiatives issued
innovation, in line with the whole change in by the provincial agencies stress two elem-
post-crisis Chinese policy orientation. The ents to empower endogenous sources: (i) pro-
most important measure in this framework is moting micro, small and medium enterprises
the “One Town, One Policy” (2010), incentiv- (SME) and establishing dedicated public
ising each town to find its own developmental innovation services, and (ii) enhancing the
path while supporting the coordinated eco- quality and innovative performances of those
nomic development of Guangdong Province towns specialised in locally rooted productions
(DSTC, 2011a, 2011b). This implies the fol- (Di Tommaso et al., 2013; DSTGG, 2017; Su
lowing actions: and Sun, 2016).
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Industrial policy in China
Nowadays, almost all Guangdong coun- To identify the two groups, we referred to
ties host at least one ST, and while a high Becattini’s (2015) contribution about industrial
number is still in the PRD (particularly in districts as originated by the historical profile of
Dongguan), many others are also localised in the production atmosphere of the hosting areas.
Sectors
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Barbieri et al.
45 PRD Non-PRD
40
35
Shaoguan
Dongguan
Jiangmen
Heyuan
Jieyang
Qingyuan
Foshan
Huizhou (PRD)
Zhaoqing (PRD)
Shantou
Yangjiang
Guangzhou
Huizhou (non-PRD)
Meizhou
Shanwei
Yunfu
Zhanjiang
Zhaoqing (non-PRD)
Zhongshan
Chaozhou
Zhuhai
Maoming
Exogenous STs Endogenous STs
Figure 4. Geographical distribution of endogenous and exogenous specialised towns, year 2015.
Source: Authors’ elaboration.
endogenous sources (Supplementary Figure 2. RQ2: Can the policy contribute to territorial
A1). Their geographical distribution confirms rebalancing within the province?
different specialisation paths between PRD
and non-PRD (Figure 4). Endogenous town- We use data at the most detailed territorial
ships are mainly concentrated in non-PRD level—that is, counties and districts—which
inner and mountainous areas, testifying to a is yet above the township one. We mainly
larger policymaking investment to promote use panel fixed-effects models to test for
these prefectures by focussing on the local robust correlations between the policy
market and existing productions. The predom- and local economic performance. Given
inance of exogenous specialisation in the PRD, the structure of the data and considering
conversely, clearly indicates its exogenous eco- that policy implementation continuously
nomic growth path, based on foreign capital changes through time and involves the great
and national migrations, although with some majority of Guangdong counties, there are
notable exceptions that founded their eco- obstacles in building proper counterfactuals
nomic growth on traditional productions. to explore causality. 14 However, to address
some causal interpretation, we add a ro-
bustness check based on latest techniques
Empirical analysis to estimate dose-response effects, particu-
We now turn to investigate the two empirical larly fit for analysing non-binary treatments
research questions: as in our case. We use the Cerulli (2015)15
fixed-effect dose-response method, which,
1. RQ1: Is the ST programme associ-
compared with usual General Propensity
ated with improved territorial economic Scores methods (Bia and Mattei, 2008;
performances? Hirano and Imbens, 2004), allows to include
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Industrial policy in China
non-treated units in the analysis and to con- 3 years.20 Summary statistics for the relevant
sider increasing treatment intensity across variables are in Supplementary Table A1.
time. Our outcome variables are industrial To analyse the association between STs
and agricultural output in county i at time t and territorial rebalancing (RQ2), we divide
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