Multinationals And World Cities

Since 1980s, along with the development of economic globalization, modern transportation and communication technology experienced fast development. The distance between city and city were shortened; economic, political and cultural contact was constantly strengthened. As a sub-national actor in international society, city began to act more positive and the theories study of city as a sub-national behavior has become more and more popular.In the city's internationalization process, Transnational Corporation plays an immeasurable role. On the basis of previous studies, this paper tries to use transnational companies as the breakthrough point to find out what is the power behind city internationalization, try to figure out whether transnational companies would push forward the internationalization of city, validate it and further explore the inner mechanism formed world city.In this paper, we first give concept definition to world cities, transnational companies; Secondly, this paper gives detailed analysis from three different aspects: the economic behaviour of transnational corporations, transnational companies'political behavior, and transnational companies'role in culture dissemination, thus explain the role of Transnational Corporation in city internationalization. Finally, we use Beijing as an example to validate our assumption.