An Analysis Of Spatial Hierarchy Of Industrial Clusters From The Perspective Of Global Value Chain

Industrial cluster is a global economic phenomenon, such as electronic information technology industrial cluster in Silicon Valley, United States, software industrial cluster in Bangalore, India, leather and clothing industrial cluster in northern Italy, textile industry cluster in Jinjiang, China, and so on. Due to the presence of a large number of industrial clusters, the map of the world has been forming a colorful, massive obvious economic mosaic. The wealth of the world has has been created mostly in these blocks. Practice has proved that that industrial clusters has become an important factor to improve the competitive advantage of regional economic.Industrial cluster is a spacial clustering phenomenon, which refers to a large number of interconnected enterprises and the related organizations assembling in a specific area. As a intermediate organization form between the enterprise and the market, Industrial cluster is a special industry organization, which builds on a specialized basis with webified features. In the era of economic globalization, industrial activities did not tend towards equilibrium, but more agglomeration in the spatial distribution. The world economic map has also been portrayed by industrial cluster too, therefore, to a large extent, industrial cluster reflects the imbalance of world economic development and as a result, industrial development forms a strict spatial hierarchy.Today, economic globalization tends to perfect while global competition tends to intense. The competition among industrial clusters compose a source of power of country competition as a whole. Just as Porter M. E., a famous American strategic management theorists, said, the competitive advantage of nations lies in the competitive advantage of the industry in the final analysis, and focus on the regional distinctive industrial clusters. And an important regional spatial regional feature which formed by the vertical separation of the global value chain, is the spatial hierarchy among local industrial clusters. While the global value chain fragmentates, the strict spatial hierarchy formed by industrial clusters, which occupy different segment of value chain, also outlines the hierarchy of the industry on a national level. Industry clusters not only showed a clear spatial stratification in the global value chain, but exist significant value hierarchy characteristics with other local industrial clusters under the same value chain. And the space value hierarchy of the global value chain is actually the global hierarchy of regional industrial clusters of the countries or regions. While promoting regional economic development, industrial clusters also lead to the imbalance of regional development and form a spatial hierarchy of industrial clusters in the context of global value chain.In the Review of domestic and foreign literature, I found that the current research does not focus on the traditional economic geography and the new economic geography research direction, but shift to pay close attention to the competitiveness of industry clusters within by using the social network analysis methods. But the above studies are mainly confined to the cluster within the local area network, and failed to investigate the competitive advantage of industrial clusters on the national level from the global value chain perspective. The economic globalization has changed the dynamic competition modes for countries, industries and individual enterprises, particularly reflected in the development of international trade. It is more practical significance to use social network research methods in the international trade and analyze one country’s industrial cluster competitiveness in the international trade network, namely the spatial hierarchy of one country’s industry cluster in the global value chain. Therefore, this paper uses international trade network to presents an empirical analysis of the spatial hierarchy of industry clusters on the state basis from the perspective of global value chain.This paper is divided into six chapters. The first chapter mainly elaborates the research background and the significance. The second chapter summarizes the development of global value chain theory, reviews the traditional theory and network perspective of industrial clusters at home and abroad, and discusses the research results of the spatial hierarchy of industrial clusters. Chapter3and chapter4are the empirical parts. Chapter3, the study design, puts forward the research hypothesis, namely the influence of international trade network variables--degree centrality, betweenness centrality, closeness centrality and international investment on the spatial hierarchy of industrial clusters. The article selects the apparel industrial clusters of the top forty countries in global clothing exports area as the sample, establishs a panel data model, and discusses the setting and test of the model. Chapter4, the part of empirical analysis, first describes each variable, then analyzes the panel data model from econometric analysis perspective, and verifies the hypothesis from Chapter3. That is to say international trade network variables--degree centrality, betweenness centrality, closeness centrality and international investment exert an positive influence on the spatial hierarchy of industrial clusters. The fifth chapter, the policy recommendations part, combines the conclusion drawed by Chapter4and discusses the optimizing and upgrading of apparel clusters of China under the condition of global value chain. Chapter6, the conclusion, drives a summary of the whole article.