| As suggested by Michael Porter, industrial cluster is a group of enterprises and institutes which are extremely interrelated and geographically agglomerated in a given area (usually dominated by one leading industry). As its spatial agglomerating effect saves the transaction cost of enterprises, spill-over effect improves the regional innovative environment and resources-inosculating effect strengthens the industrial competitive advantage, industrial cluster accelerates regional economic development absolutely as a new phenomenon of industrial organization.Not only does automotive industry play an important role in the developed economy, but it also takes a fundamental role in developing economies as a pillar industry. Especially in China, which faces the transformation of social structure, the clustering development of automotive industry would speed up the process of industrialization and the development of market economy in large extent. Then, what's the situation of the automotive industry in China? What are the differences between China and the developed countries including USA, Japan and Germany? How can automotive industry develop into a clustering way?In order to explain these questions, this paper is illustrated into five parts.PartⅠ: A summary of the theories of industrial clusterFour conditions should be owned to form an industrial cluster: (1) industrial agglomeration; (2) close relation of different industries; (3) modern labor division; (4) highly-developed cyber organization. Therefore, the main features of industrial cluster are concluded as: spatial and geographical similarity; industrial concentration; large amount of enterprises; sharing of resources; well-developed supporting industries; simulation of learning and spill-over effects. There are mainly three indexes to identify industrial cluster, including concentration rate, the way of output-input and charting analysis, which has its own advantages and disadvantages. Different schools provide different explanations to industrial cluster, for example, Classical Theory of External Economy with its representative Marshal, New Eco-geographical Theory with its representative Krugaman, Institutional Theory with its representative North, Theory of Competitive Advantage with its representative Porter, etc. Also, J Venables & Peter Swann applied mathematical model to analyze the phenomenon and made great achievements. In China, the research of industrial cluster is relatively backward.PartⅡ: An analysis on the forming mechanism of automotive industrial clusterBecause of its high proportion in the total value-added, the power of exportation to increase the revenue, provision of large sum of jobs and main source of taxes, automotive industry plays an important role in the national economy. As the hinge of industrial chain, automotive industry gets a lot of upriver and downriver industries, including the processing industry of raw materials, manufacturing industry, energy-processing industry, highroad-constructing industry, communication and transportation industry, sales and distribution industry, service industry and industries of supporting goods. The industrial relation creates an environment of clustering development. As a perspective of producing flow, body manufacturer has a competitive and cooperative relation with supplier of raw materials, manufacturer of spare parts, sellers and service-providers. Nowadays, there are ten big automotive towns all over the world with the features of industrial cluster: Detroit Custer in USA of GM, Ford & Chrysler; Tokyo Cluster of Nissan and Toyota Cluster; Stuttgart Cluster of Daimler-Benz and Wolfsburg Cluster of Volkswagen and Rus Selsheim Cluster of Opel in Germany; Torino Cluster of Fiat in Italy; Paris Cluster of Citroen & Peugeot and Boulogne-Billancourt Cluster of Renault in France; Birmingham Cluster of Leyland in British.PartⅢ: The situations of automotive cluster in USA, Japan and Germany are analyzed and the successful experiences are concluded.On the basis of retrospect of historical change of automotive industry in USA, Japan and Germany, the Detroit Area, Toyota Town and Stuttgart Region were selected to analyze the forming reasons and developing situation of automotive industrial cluster. After a comparison of production amount, developing pattern and R & D input, the similarities are concluded among the three regions: firstly, industrial chain is formed with a dominant role of core enterprises, such as Detroit with three big brothers of GM, Ford & Chrysler; secondly, the relation of the enterprises in the cluster is flexible and dynamic, in other words, both competitive and cooperative; thirdly, specialization of labor division is cute, such as Toyota, which only deals with main spare parts and body-assembly, left junior and media spare parts to contracting enterprises; fourthly, social-embedded feature and network structure, every industrial cluster is interrelated with local culture; fifthly, the support from the government policy including organization policy, capital policy, technology policy and consumption policy of automotive industry.PartⅣ: The strategic choice of automotive industrial cluster in ChinaThe history of automotive industry in China can be divided into three stages: (1) initial stage, from 1953 to 1958; (2) stage of independent development, from 1958 to 1984; (3) stage of opening up to the outside world, from 1985 till now. Generally speaking, Jilin Province, Hubei Province, Shanghai City, Chongqing City and the Area of Peking & Tianjin all reach to a large scale both in the amount of production and the amount of supporting enterprises; Jiangsu Province and Liaoning Province already developed into an automotive cluster, while Guangdong Province and Anhui Province appear to have some features of cluster. However, the fact is that the concentration rate in industrial and regional level is low. The reasons are concluded as: backward investing philosophy and unreasonable investment system; decentralized structure of industrial organization and uneconomic scale of enterprises; imbalanced development of body and spare parts and relatively backward relating industries; backward technological level and inefficiency of productivity; overproduction.There are mainly four points on the developing pattern of automotive industry in China: the point of"laissez-faire"; the point of"independent development"; the point of"controlling the proportion of stock shares"; the point of"manufacturing center". As suggested in this paper, the way of independent development & opening-up is indispensable to the development of automotive industry. At last, some suggestions are provided: firstly, the gradual drop-out of national capital and the improvement of the structure of property rights; secondly, the developing environment of civil economy should be improved and the supporting industries including spare parts should be accelerated; thirdly, the input on R&D should be increased with technical innovation and brand-breeding; fourthly, extra importance should be attached to the core enterprises to boost the concentration rate in production and regional level; fifthly, healthy and mutual mechanism of production, learning and research should be established; sixthly, the sustainable way should be insisted. |
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