A Study Of The "Vertical Specialization Gravity Index" And The Modular Collaborative Networking Mechanism For National Strategic Economic Planning Zones

Since 2005, a series of new zones, comprehensive reform pilot zones and economic planning zones have obtained approvals from the State Council. And there are dozens of "regional development plans" having been developed into "national strategies". These planning zones cover a majority of Chinese provinces, making the integral space layout of current Chinese economy demonstrate a segmental support pattern of a series of "national strategic economic planning zones". Every "national strategic economic planning zone" has already developed its great prospect and blueprint that people look forward to. However, enterprise and industry, as the basis for economic development, is the strategic theme that ultimately promotes the construction and development of such a large series of "national strategic economic planning zones". Without large-scale enterprises taking root and continuing to grow, there will be no cultivation, development and expansion of regional industrial value chain or value module and the construction of the series of "national strategic economic planning zones" will then just stay on the paper of the Regional Development Plan Report.The common rule of regional economic prosperity under the global value network is to form a strong regional "vertical specialization gravity". Namely, under the global value network and the trend of enterprises searching for "location" in different countries or regions globally to develop the dynamic optimal resource layout and configuration, a country or region constantly creates driving factors which form the strong competitive advantages of an enterprise and in turn make it qualified to be the base in which a series of high-grade industrial value module take root, which is key to sustainable economic development of a country or region. From this sense, each "national strategic economic planning zone" must constantly create location factors that are well matched with its development orientation and are able to form strong competitive advantages of an enterprise so as to drive the value chain of "Chinese native enterprises" and "foreign multinationals" to extend towards and connect with it.In order to grasp regional characteristics and construction situation and avoid "low-end and homogeneous development" of these dozens of national strategic economic planning zones throughout the country, this paper carries out the research on the quantification index of size and orientation of "location’s vertical specialization gravity" for each national strategic economic planning zone to attract value modules to "take root" in 2013 based on the two-dimensional perspectives of "enterprise+(R & D, manufacturing, marketing) industrial value module". And on this basis, this paper tries to build a scientific and comprehensive evaluation index system of "vertical specification gravity index" to help national strategic planning zones determine key location factors needed to be cultivated and developed systematically. Furthermore, according to the idea of separating firstly and then integrating of "modularity" and the "new bucket" principle of value creation under the global value network, the existing national strategic economic planning zones, on the basis of forming "point" competitive advantages in single "national strategic economic planning zone", should be integrated from a systematic and overall perspective so as to form a collaborative relationship with value creation and then build the "value network for national strategic economic planning zones" with the "1+1>2" value creating synergy effect, forming the overall synergy competitive advantages of "face" of economic planning zones. This paper conducts an in-depth study of the mechanism of "modular collaborative networking" of value creation in national strategic economic planning zones from the four-dimensional perspectives of "enterprise competition and cooperation+industrial value module+location resource endowment+government network governance". Theoretically, this study can expand a new research field of "regional economy modular network organization", bringing forth a new idea of "modular coordination" to the research on the coordinated development strategy of regional economy.This paper is mainly divided into four parts. The first part is an introduction, including chapter 1 which mainly introduces the background and significance of the selected topic of this thesis, literature review, research approaches, research ideas and frameworks as well as major innovations and deficiencies. The second part is the main body of this paper that mainly discusses issues occurring in the quantification index of "vertical specification gravity" of each national strategic economic planning zone, chapter 2 to chapter 6 included. Chapter 2 analyzes factors influencing an enterprise’s choice of investment locations in accordance with enterprise location choice theory, based on which forms an index system for evaluating "vertical specification gravity index" of national strategic economic planning zones in R&D, manufacturing and marketing value modules; furthermore, it determines the research sample and model building method of this study and introduces the processes of data gathering and processing. The logical design and developing structure of chapter 3, chapter 4 and chapter 5 are the same, calculating "vertical specification gravity index" of economic planning zones’ R&D, manufacturing and marketing value modules respectively through the factor analysis model after obtaining various index values, and making clustering analysis on the basis of gravity index of each value module, which finally contributes to grasping the strategic similarities and differences distribution of the characteristics of each economic planning zone more scientifically. Chapter 6, based on the calculation of "vertical specification gravity index" of each value module made in chapter 3 to chapter 5, makes an in-depth comparative analysis among the overall gravity of all zones in combination with the strategic positioning of national strategic economic planning zones and industry vision. Then it can be seen through comparison the gap between realistic condition and strategic positioning of each planning zone and points out regional factors needed to be cultivated on emphasis. In addition, it makes the clustering analysis of variables formed by three kinds of gravity scores. Then it can be seen as a whole the distribution characteristics of each planning zone’s industrial gravity and the level it belongs to, further deepening the understanding of the overall state of gravity of planning zones. The third part involves chapter 7 only, mainly studying the mechanism of modular collaborative networking of national strategic economic planning zones and developing a new research field of "modular synergy" for regional economy coordinated development strategy. It firstly analyzes the evolution path of "modular" theory and historical changes of the division of labor and cooperation of China’s regional economy. And based on this, it puts forward the theoretical perspective of regional economy modular synergy development. Then, it studies the mechanism of "modular collaborative networking" of value creating in national strategic economic planning zones thoroughly from the perspective of "enterprise competition and cooperation+industrial value module+location resource endowment+government network governance". The fourth part, including chapter 8, is the conclusion and prospect which makes a conclusive analysis of contents and theme of this paper and proposes relevant policies and suggestions as well as prospects on future works...