Research On The Upgrading Of China’s Clothing Industry Cluster In The Global Value Chain

Clothing industry, one of the most important industries in China, plays an irreplaceable role in solving employment problems, promoting boom-town construction and maintaining social stability. However, the clothing industry in China is now facing such challenges as the fading of its low-cost advantage and the pressure of keen competition from domestic and international market, which thus makes it imminent to upgrade clothing industry clusters.Segmentation of the global value chain poses an opportunity for the clothing industry clusters to be both embedded in global value chain and be upgraded. Hence, the following study is supposed to focus not only on the internal relations of the clothing industry clusters in China, but also on the external relations. Meanwhile, it is highly necessary to analyze the development and upgrading of the clothing industry clusters in the context of global value chain.This dissertation analyzes the governance of global value chain by following such clues as governance and upgrading and by basing on such theories as Institutional Economics, Western economics and International Trade Theory. This dissertation draws the following conclusions by resorting mainly to such methodology as quantitative analysis, qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis.Firstly, this dissertation, based on the analysis and summarisation of global value chain theory, arrives at the conclusion that the industry clusters in developing countries, in one way or another, are embedded into value chain by taking advantage of segments of the value chain. In other words, in order to improve their value-gaining ability, the industry clusters are likely to embed themselves into one or more taches of value chain, or into different taches of one certain value chain or into different value chains to achieve competitive interaction.Secondly, this dissertation, based on the study of the clothing industry clusters in China, arrives at the conclusion that global clothing value chain is buyer-driven. The clothing industry clusters in China are embedded in the chain with the processing and manufacturing tache, which however doesn’t necessarily mean upgrading. The governance of leading industries towards value chain seems to promote the upgrading of products and process of the clothing industry clusters in China, while clusters, on their own, are unable to actively change the mode and tache in which they can be embedded, that is to say, it is impossible for the clusters to deal with ramparts set up by administrators in the core taches, not to mention the improvement of value-obtaining ability.Last but not the least, this dissertation, based on the analysis of the restricting factors for the upgrading of industry clusters, arrives at the conclusion that the clothing industry clusters in China are export-oriented, which signifies that the external relations of global value chain play an increasingly important role in their formation and development. Therefore, the upgrading of the clothing industry clusters in China is supposed to cover the following two aspects: one is the internal value chain, the other is global value chain. The industry clusters should not only make active use of exterior factors while considering internal factors, but also achieve the core competence of industry clusters in the high-end tache of value chain from the respective aspect of enterprise and government.