A Study On The Development Of Industrial Clusters Based On Global Value Chain

Since the economic reform and open policy, a large amount of regional industrial clusters, known as "clumplike economy", grow and evolve very rapidly in the developed regions of China such as Zhejiang province, which has been confirmed to be effective approach and distinct characteristics of regional economic development. However that kind of economic development mode begins to undergo flinty trials because of the lack of resources, increase of production costs and pollution of environment. The severe bottleneck upon economic development makes it necessary to upgrade the industries. Therefore it is very important to explore and study the mechanisms and approaches for sustainable development of industrial clusters.There are two kinds of basic approaches for sustainable development of industrial clusters, one based on the clusters themselves to excavate local resources more deeply, the other based on global value chain to coordinate different resources more widely along the chain. Most practices and researches in existence are concentrated in the first approach, which consider the development of industrial clusters from the view of recombination of regional resources. But that is not enough for sustainable development of industrial clusters as the advantages of primary factors, such as abundant natural resources, lower labor cost and cheaper land cost, are hard to continue, regional innovation systems are lack of exterior traction, coarse modes of economy development take it as expense that consume resources heavily and damage environment greatly, manufacturing clusters possess scanty value added within the embarrassing situation of being big but weak. Hereby this research will based on the second approach, i.e., to probe into sustainable development and upgrading of industrial clusters from the point of view of global value chain, in order to discover more effective solutions of cluster evolution theoretically and practically.The logic of this research is to establish firstly a theoretical framework, and then to apply for analyzing systematically the evolution of the development of industrial clusters. After careful review of relevant literatures, this article discusses conceptually the global value chain, appraises subsistent models of value chain, and analyses going problems. Emphasizing particularly on relationship between enterprises, the author divides the total cost of value chain into inner costs and coupling costs, and designs a theoretical model of global value chain constituting a uniform framework for subsequent positive analysis and normative studies from the concept of ultimate customer costs related closely to value-adding processes of different enterprises along the global value chain. By means of that theoretical model created this article analyses geographically, temporally and structurally economic issues of the global value chain, brings forward the concept of chainlike economy, comparing with clumplike economy, emphasized upon the synergism of resources from different enterprises along with a same global value chain, and studies the mechanisms of the chainlike economy originated from strategic alliances inside the global value chain. Furthermore the author compares the advantages of the chainlike economy over the clumplike economy including rational allocation of resources among wider spectrum and under higher level, dynamic optimization of economic processes, global establishment of innovation systems and inter-regional flow of knowledge, as well as active traction and distinct acceleration to industrial upgrading in developing countries and regions.With the help of global value chain model designed for economics research the article analyses the characteristics and advantages of cluster based value chains, and probes into different types of industrial clusters from the viewpoint of global value chain including leading type, leaded type, balanced type and mixed type, studies diverse characteristics of value chains and upgrading approaches of exterior origin clusters by foreign direct investments and inner origin clusters by local investors. By interviewing investors and managers of the enterprises inside industrial clusters the author makes a comparison of success and failure between two border upon industrial clusters, reviews the evolvement process of industrial clusters from balanced type to mixed type, and reveals key factors impacting upon sustainable development of industrial clusters.Moreover, based upon surveys on the spots of several industrial clusters in Zhejiang province, the article investigations the status in quo of the development and the restricting factors of industrial clusters in China today. It concludes that under severe competition condition the industrial clusters in Zhejiang province possess specialized division of labor and relatively perfect infrastructure, costs of manufacturing increase continuously, and profit margins reduce evidently, while it is the chief obstacle being lack of advanced professionals for the further development. It is also revealed that in order to progress further the enterprises in these clusters prefer product upgrading and process upgrading and have been tried for these, when as they are going to enter into high value-adding taches of the value chains and refuse to transfer outwards or to wait behind. According to these results, the author clarifies the idea to weave clumplike economy with chainlike economy, and presents strategic approaches for the sustainable development of industrial clusters as follows, from "made in China" to "invented in China", from "world factory" to "world company", and from "insert into global value chain" to "choose global value- chain". Policy suggestions about enterprises, government and support systems are also given.The research methods applied in this article include deducing analysis and inducing analysis, positive studies and normative analysis, as well as case studies and statistic analysis. This paper tries to establish a relatively systematic model of global value chain for economics analysis by creating a costs system of global value chain, and strives to innovate the researches about the developing mechanism of industrial clusters from the viewpoint of global value chain, which includes sorting industrial clusters based on value chain governing, summarizing the characteristics of different kinds of industrial clusters from the viewpoint of value chain, and discussing the evolution and upgrading of these clusters.