The Study, Based On Germination And Growth Mechanism Of Industrial Cluster Model Of Rural Industrialization

Poverty is not a destiny.The development experience of human society since Industrial Revolution has demonstrated that the successful model of industrialization in developing countries could effectively help poor people get out of the poverty trap. The industrialization process of China in recent three decades,especially the dramatic achievement of Cluster-Based Rural Industrial Development Model in eastern coastal areas of China,can be viewed as a condense version of industrialization that had happened in Europe in the past two centuries.Unfortunately,the theoretical explanations provided by current development economics literatures about China's rapid industrialization process were and still are superficial and stereotyped.Through the in-depth analysis of a rural industrial cluster in Zhejiang Province,combined by the analysis of cluster-based rural industrialization process of this area since the reform and the opening-up,the dissertation tries to provide theoretical and empirical answers to the following key questions about the germination and evolvement of industrialization in developing countries:(1) In the embryonic stage of industrialization,how the industrial clustering helped the entrepreneurs to overcome the industrial capital barrier?(2) What kind of development channel was provided to entrepreneurs through industrial clustering?(3) What's the mobilization and cultivation mechanism of the country's scarce and latent grass-roots entrepreneurship in the early stage of industrialization?(4) How does the quality upgrade of industrial clusters come into reality in Zhejiang's rural industrialization process?The answers to the above four questions can be summarized as the following conclusions of the dissertation:(1) The cluster-based co-operate system of SMEs could effectively lower the capital barrier of industrialization.To put it more specifically,the existence of imperfect capital markets and capital barrier could induce entrepreneurs' organizational innovation in production;entrepreneur who faces credit constraints chooses the cluster-based co-operate system to decompose the production technology with high entry barrier into the technologies with lower barriers.Thus,the entrepreneurs suffers lack of capital in developing countries could enter into the industrialization process according to their own entrepreneurial potential by choosing a suitable type of production technology.(2) Besides the participation opportunities offered to the entrepreneurs,the cluster-based co-operate system of SMEs also provided the development channel for them.The dissertation did a test of the Baumol hypothesis,which supposes the positive relationship between the returns to capital and corresponding capital barriers of the different types of technology,within the context of Zhejiang's rural industrial clusters.The confirmation of Baumol hypothesis indicates that,within an industrial cluster,the higher rate of returns to capital could stimulate entrepreneurs to keep on transforming profit into capital,which result in an escalation from the application of technology with lower entry barrier into a higher one.(3) The scarce and latent grass-roots entrepreneurship could be fully motivated and stimulated by cluster-based co-operate system.Specifically,the vertically-integrated system,which demands a higher-level entrepreneur competence, was decomposed by the industrial cluster through the division of labor into a form of production system which demands a lower level of entrepreneur competence.Through this mechanism,the grass-roots entrepreneurship was highly motivated,and further cultivated in a dynamic process.(4) The countermeasures taken by the local government and entrepreneurs to tackle the crisis can be viewed as a key to the realization of industrial clusters' quality upgrade.Based on the field study of quality upgrade process of many industrial clusters in Zhejiang Province,the dissertation discovered the critical relationship between the crisis and quality upgrade of clusters,and argued that the crisis could trigger a series of countermeasures of entrepreneurs and local governments,which could then induce the quality upgrade in the clusters.The dissertation built a theoretical analysis framework to explain how the crisis stimulated the cooperation between enterprises,local governments,and NGOs.This theoretical hypothesis is tested using the panel data from several counties of Zhejiang Province.In the summary,from the industrial cluster perspective,the dissertation combined theoretical and empirical analysis to explain the germination and development mechanism of rapid rural industrialization happened in eastern coastal rural area.The dissertation may have contributed to the development economics literature in the follow way:Firstly,the dissertation clarifies the linkage between capital market development,capital barrier and industrial cluster,which was not well documented and analyzed in the previous literatures.Secondly,the dissertation testified the validity of the Baumol Hypothesis.Last but not least,the dissertation improved the Sonobe and Otsuka Model through the incorporation of crisis into the analysis framework of quality upgrade of industrial cluster.