Territorial Division Of Labour And Spatial Pattern Of Urbanization In The Context Of Globalization

Since the late20th century, technological progress and institutional innovation eliminate the obstacles to cross-border flows of productive factors and the products, and promote the continuous development of economic globalization, and ultimately a large-scale global production network is formed. Further, the formation of global production networks achieves a global reconfiguration of the product value chains, which has a major impact on the structure, form and relation of the international division of labor. For China, the model of new international division of spatial labor at least has three characteristics. First, the transition of territorial division of labor is from the domestic division at regional scale to the territorial division of labor at the global-scale. Second, the territorial specialization of inter-industry and intra-industry are shifted into intra-product specialization, which highlights the division and cooperation in accordance with the value chains in the same product. Third, the evolution of international and domestic division results in new spatial relationships. In the context of globalization, the evolution of the spatial division presents opportunities and challenges to the long-term development of China’s urbanization. On the one hand, foreign investment and exports have become important power sources of the rapid expansion of the city size, and correspondingly, the transformation of urban functions is also advanced rapidly. On the other hand, it has become increasingly obvious that China’s urbanization dependents on the developed economies, which in turn cause the urbanization process frailly and unsustainably. Consequently, it is necessary to further explore the basic characteristics of the evolution of current spatial division of labor and its influence on the spatial pattern of urbanization and the mechanisms of how it works.Comprehensively using related theories and methods of geography, economics and management science, this thesis constructs a consecution of "economic globalization——new territorial division of labor——new spatial pattern of urbanization". Basing on the above and taking the Yangtze River Delta for example, the thesis exerts qualitative and quantitative researches analyzing the pattern characteristics and the spatial process of new territorial division of labor and the new spatial pattern of urbanization and its evolution, and further studies the influential mechanisms how the evolution of territorial division of labor works on the transformation of spatial pattern of China’s urbanization, and then concludes several general mechanisms and related models. This thesis consists of three sections.Section I includes introduction and the research progress at home and abroad and the research framework of the thesis. The introduction of chapter1defines the research objects and relevant concepts, and presents the research background and its significance and puts forwards the main contents of the study, basic research perspective and technological route. Chapter2overviews and grasps the main research progress at home and abroad, including the research on globalization, the research on new spatial division of labor, the study framework of cities and regions and related research methods, etc. Basing on the above, chapter3proposes a fundamental research framework for this thesis. It is firstly describing the main dimensions of the evolution of territorial division in the context of globalization, that is, from the scale, form and relationships to master the dynamics of evolution of the territorial division. Second, from the macro, medium and micro levels of the three different scales, the thesis overviews and introduces the current emergence of new forms of urban space, such as Mega-City Region, Mega-Region and multi-centered Metropolitan area, Edge city. At the end of the chapter establishes a causal link between new territorial division of labor and new spatial patterns of urbanization, and probes into the influences and mechanisms how the evolution of territorial division of labor works on the transformation of spatial pattern of urbanization, which constitute a basis for further study in this thesis.Section II studies the new territorial division of labor and the new spatial pattern of urbanization and the mechanisms and models between them, taking the Yangtze River Delta as the example. Chapter4observes the pattern characteristics of the territorial division of labor and the spatial process evolution in three aspects in the Yangtze River Delta region. First, the geographical scope of the controversial Yangtze River Delta area is identified to be composed of two provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang and one municipality of Shanghai. Second, export data is selected to measure the extent of Yangtze River Delta taking part in the international division of labor, and the regional product surplus index is constituted to reflect the internal changes of territorial division of labor in Yangtze River Delta area. It is found that within the Yangtze River Delta area all regions are actively promoting the scale-oriented restructuring so as to be fused into globalization, but also there are obvious geographical differences.Overall, the strategic scale-oriented restructuring of "deterritorialisation" is evident in Yangtze River Delta area in which exports size and the degree of dependence on foreign trade develop promptly. But the development is not based on the geographical response of the adjustment policy. Instead, the extent of regionalization in the south of Jiangsu, northeast of Zhejiang and Shanghai has become increasingly low, which may affect the future development of globalization in the region and make the structure of this scale is unstable. And there is a unique process of scale-reorganization in the Yangtze River Delta motivated by the geographical balance of deterritorialisation and the diversity of territorialisation. Third, owing to its organizational structure and the circuitous industry chain, the automobile industry is chosen as the empirical research to study the territorial intra-product specialization. At first, the automobile industry chain is divided into5production sectors:R&D design, general parts and components manufacturing, assembly and sub-assembly, vehicle manufacturing and conversion, brand marketing and management. Then it is analyzing the spatial structure and evolution of the trend and sum up the characteristics of territorial intra-product specialization by horizontal and vertical contrasts of the total production values of every production sector linked into the map. The study of Yangtze River Delta area indicates that from the late20th century to the present, the forms and contents of territorial division of labor have shown some new changes. The spatial distribution of low-sector production units become more dispersed and spread into the surrounding areas mostly. Simultaneously, there are two main geographical relations between low-sector and high-sector. One is geographical superposition with local combination of different sectors, and the other is a combination of proximity, the representative of Wenzhou-Taizhou area and Hangzhou-Shaoxing area. In addition, the trend of territorial intra-product specialization is not very clear based on the county-level units. Using econometric methods such as cointegration analysis and Grange causality test, the fourth quantitatively analyzes the outcome caused by uneven division of labor between developing regions and developed regions and validates the consequences of vulnerability of regional development and structure-locked and production environment. The results show that economic growth and the development of secondary industry dependent on exports, exhibiting a long-run equilibrium and one-way causal relationship, and the influential coefficient reaches0.72and0.71separately that fluctuation of regional exports impacts the GDP and the added value of the secondary industry. Territorial division of labor in low-sector production in a region leads it into the "trap of comparative advantage" through different transmit route. To a certain extent, the study area’s export growth brings about the increase of pollutant emissions. Chapter5argues the new spatial pattern of urbanization at varied scales. After discriminating the main concepts and considering the development characteristics of the Yangtze River Delta area, it is firstly determining the key applicable concepts for the study area. Then the thesis discerns the edge cities neighboring Shanghai, and taking Jiading district of Shanghai as a case, depicts the history of the city’s growth and transformation and the characteristics of its development. Third, the multi-center index of metropolitan development is constructed and used to portray the extent of population and employment multi-center in Metropolitan Shanghai. It shows that metropolitan Shanghai, has a growing degree of multi-center, especially in the Pudong New Area, Minhang, Baoshan, Jiading. It is finally empirical research on Yangtze River Delta area making use of the idea and concept of Mega-Region from abroad. The methods of how to define the borders of Mega-Region are from the theoretical framework that produce services concentrate in urban centers and manufacturing spread to the periphery and thus result in inter-regional linkages and close relations with each other. Subsequently, the thesis studies the transformation process of the borders and the spatial structures in different periods. Chapter6draws conclusion that new form of territorial division of labor gives the new cities surrounding big cities opportunities to develop fast, and the superposition of multi-scale of territorial division of labor benefits the stability of spatial structure of the metropolitan city with multi-center, large-scale spatial patterns of urbanization is ultimately formed on the foundation of territorial division of labor, intensive contact of inter-regions and the evolution of regional relations. All of these rely on the external and core drive factors acting on the general process of the spatial pattern of urbanization. The end of the chapter summarizes the general pattern of spatial structure formation of urbanization in Yangtze River Delta.Section III is the conclusion of the thesis. It summarizes the full text and extracts the innovation points and make prospects for future research.The thesis makes progress in the following three aspects:(1) A consecution of "economic globalization——new territorial division of labor——new spatial pattern of urbanization" is constructed, and then leads into a possible idea to study contemporary Chinese urbanization patterns;(2) It is creative to do a empirical research on the intra-product specialization in the context of globalization and receive satisfactory conclusions;(3) An empirical study is carried out on the concept of Mega-Region, probing into the methods of defining it and the its development characteristics.