The Influence Of The Progress Of Information Communication Technologies On Industrial Aggolomeration

For the last fifty years, especially the recent ten years, Information Communication Technologies (ICT) have been developing by leaps and bounds, and penetrating into every aspects of world economy. It is with zero cost that it transports digital goods (codified information) across space in no time. This exerts an intensive impact upon the current geographic distribution of economic activities. Industrial agglomeration is the main form of geographic distribution of economic activities. Certainly it cannot avoid the profound influences brought by the progress of ICT. The process is the research subject of this thesis.To begin with, this paper makes a clear description about the definitions and background knowledge of ICT and industrial agglomeration respectively, and their evolutions in China. Afterwards it analyses the influences of ICT on the factors of industrial agglomeration one by one. In the end it discusses the tendencies of different kinds of industrial agglomeration according to the change of the importance of their determinant factors.Through the analysis it comes to the conclusion below: With the rapid development of ICT, standardized material agglomeration and standardized immaterial agglomeration will display weak tendency to agglomeration, whereas flexible material agglomeration and creative immaterial agglomeration will show strong tendency to agglomeration. To a critical extent this difference results from labor cost factor and creative knowledge factor. This conclusion is directive to both the macro-decision of government and the micro-decision of enterprise. Most data and viewpoints quoted by this paper come from the outcomes of latest foreign economic study, and a new analytical system is presented after a process of digestion, integration and refinement. Therefore it is of good reference to the further study in this field.