Research On Upgrading Of Regional Industrial Structure Based On The Perspective Of Value Chain

With the penetration of globalization, the way of international division of labor has greatly changed, from inter-industry trade to horizontal trade, and currently, the trend is continuously expanding towards intra-product trade, thus formed the product global value chain (GVC), which has brought huge capital and technologies to China's coastland and promoted these regions' industrial structure upgrading. However, integrating into division of GVC, inevitably, is always accompanied by risks of low-end embedment and of being captured. For the past few years, the demand scale and level of China's domestic market have steadily increased, hence providing a broad arena to build a national value chain (NVC). Therefore, building GVC & NVC at the same time is the best choice for a region's industrial structure upgrading.Using basic theories of industrial economics, development economics and regional economics, this dissertation applies the methods of input-and-output analysis, comparative analysis and Game Playing analysis etc to analyse the mechanism of GVC & NVC co-building and its affects over a region's industrial structure upgrading. In this process, this dissertation establishes a leading industry selection model for a region considering value chain as an index, and empirically, takes Shandong province as an example to conduct research, focing on the ways and tactics to realize industrial structure upgrading. The main researches and conclusions of this dissertation are as follows:First, the dissertation analyses the influence over a region's industrial structure upgrading exerted by integrating into GVC and points out that integration into GVC can be a double-edged sword as for developing countries or areas, concerning its promotion functions as well as negative effects. The former, promotion functions, include exercising the comparative advantages, providing capital support and technology spillover, but the upgrading curb, vertical manipulation and low-end embedment as well as industry association-weakening fall into the latter category, the negative effects.Second, this dissertation discusses the choice of regional industrial structure upgrading under both the challenges and risks when embedding into GVC and proposes that co-building of GVC & NVC is a feasible option for a region's industrial structure upgrading. This paper suggests that building NVC while participating in GVC can efficiently utilize the domestic resources and market and ultimately clime to the high value-added link in the value chain. Obviously, the success of co-construction of GVC & NVC is essentially dependent upon market demands, technologies and government policies.Third, this dissertation proposes the concrete tactic of upgrading a region's industrial structure through the co-building of GVC & NVC, which is to realize a single industry's value chain two-end evolvement and to upgrade a whole region's industrial structure by value chain ascension of leading industry.Forth, the dissertation summarizes and generalizes the evolution characteristics of Shandong province's industrial structure and compares these characteristics to other coastal provinces. By doing this, the following conclusions are gotten, Shandong province's industrial structure is constantly evolving towards the high-grade direction, but many problems are emerging in this process, like the development lags of service industry, the low proportion of processing trade, and the shortage of independent innovation as well as industrial structure similarity with other regions.Fifth, the dissertation analyses the deeper reasons concerning the above-mentioned problems in the process of industrial structure upgrading from the value chain perspective. It examines the characteristics of GVC&NVC level in Shandong, followed by a comparison with other coastal cities and provinces, arriving to a conclusion that GVC&NVC, with a minor mutual facilitation, is relatively low in level and has a limited influence on the industrial structure upgrading in Shandong. Therefore, it is cogent that the problem solving in industrial structure upgrading be met by strengthening international and domestic labor division, and promoting GVC&NVC level, which serves as the facilitator to continuous promotion of industrial structure.Sixth, the paper specifically studies the importance of making industrial structure upgrading through the co-building of GVC & NVC, with the strategy following. It points out that the co-building is now essential and urgent for Shandong; leading industries must be determined scientifically in the future, and the optimal way toward progress shall be chosen with government providing vigorous policy support.The contribution and innovation of this dissertation lie in the following aspects-proposing the new idea that under the background of global economic integration and China's sustainable development, the co-building of GVC&NVC is a basic strategy selection for a region's industrial structure upgrading. Also, deep and systematic analysis of the mechanism of regional industrial structure upgrading based on the theory of GVC&NVC co-building; meanwhile, modification to leading industry selection model is also presented. In addition, this dissertation takes Shandong province as instance to undertake empiritical analysis. The research of this dissertation enriches the industrial structure optimization theory, as well as provides a new idea and methodology for China's local government to draft industry development plans.