| Silk is not only a commodity with economic value,but also a cultural symbol on the historical stage of our country.From "Silk Diplomacy" to the naming of Sino-foreign trade roads by Richthofen after the "Silk Road",silk has shown its great significance to China.The modern period is a period of social and economic turmoil and complexity in China.It's also an important turning point in the history of China.The development of industry in this period is either prosperous or declining.China's silk industry is considered to be an industry with great advantages in the world from ancient times till now.However,under the complicated domestic and international environment in modern times,whether the industrial level is still in the forefront of the world is especially worth discussing from the perspectives of history and geography.Historical geography and modern economic geography have different research emphases.The research focus of historical geography is mostly on modern or ancient times,which makes a large number of historical methods and paradigms applied in the research process,and may be quite different from what modern geography presents.This article is a comparative study of the silk industry between China and the United States,taking modern times as the research period and the country as the research scale.By comparing the differences between the two,the development level of China-US silk industry in modern times is analyzed.Based on the actor network theory,this paper analyzes the influence factors of industry organization and social and economic environment,and summarizes its influence mechanism on industry development.Social organizations in the United States have a strong control over the industry.Research on the management methods of social organizations in China and the United States in modern times and the guiding significance of social forces to industrial development will make up for China's deficiencies in social organizations and provide a complementary role for the guidance of the state.In the research process,this paper not only uses the research ideas of modern geography and GIS and other technical software,but also uses the historical methods of processing and analyzing historical materials.The results show that:(1)industrial distribution: in modern times,China's silk industry was scattered on the national scale,but concentrated on the provincial scale.The distribution of silk industry in the United States shows a state of agglomeration,while its spatial evolution shows a mechanism of agglomeration and diffusion.The concentrated industrial distribution in the United States makes the end product manufacturers,retailers and wholesalers have strong regional connectivity,which is conducive to the realization of industrial agglomeration economy,thus expanding the scale of production.It is also conducive to the communication between various production departments,making it easier to carry out vertical integration of production,realizing internalization of transactions,and improving production capacity and efficiency.And to a certain extent,the different silk industry distribution in China and the United States have affected the different integration efforts of industry organizations to domestic industry practitioners in the process of absorption and management.(2)Import and export level: The development speed of China's silk industry is slower than that of the United States,and its industrial level is gradually lagging behind that of the United States in the whole research period.First of all,China and the United States have different import-export attributes.China is the world's important raw silk exporter,while the United States is the world's largest raw silk importer.Secondly,compared with the import-export of silk goods from other countries in the world,China's export volume of silk shows a downward trend,while the United States shows a sustained growth trend.Finally,judging from the types of commodities imported and exported,China's main export commodities are raw silk produced by the primary industry,and the domestic economic structure is dominated by the agricultural production department.And the import-export income mainly comes from raw silk,while the control of Chinese industry association is concentrated on end products such as silk goods.This kind of management dislocation leads to the insufficient control of the industry by industry association.The silk production department in the United States is a processing and manufacturing industry.Unlike the agricultural sector,the industrial sector is more likely to produce economies of scale.The mode of production in the United States is to import raw materials for production and process them domestically,thus increasing the economic added value of the products.In the process of the development of American silk manufacturing industry,it actively absorbs the world's advanced science,technology and system to promote technological innovation.And the direct control of production departments by industry association has improved the development efficiency within the industry.Therefore,the US silk industry has gradually surpassed China in terms of product quality,commodity types and production technology.(3)Influencing factors of industrial development: Taking Shanghai Silk Trade Association and Silk Association of American as examples,the forms of industrial organization between China and the United States are indeed quite different in terms of management mode,department setup,level complexity and the intensity of government intervention.From the perspective of industry association,this paper analyzes the factors that affect the speed of industry development,mainly in the following five aspects: 1 problem orientation.Whether there is a special committee set up for specific affairs to assign person to handle relevant affairs;2 the degree of conciseness of the structure.Whether the management mode of the industry association is clear,the division of labor is clear,and whether the management level is concise but comprehensive and systematic;3 degree of transaction internalization.Whether the ability of industry association to integrate resources can maximize the integration of domestic resources,achieve regional division of labor,and increase industrial production efficiency;4 the will of the actor.Whether the self-will of members to join a trade group is voluntary;5 degree of external organization orientation.Whether the composition of industry association is greatly interfered by external organizations and whether it is greatly interfered by the government.The results show that the establishment of special departments with clear functions and powers,the maximum absorption of domestic and even foreign employees,the maximum integration of industrial resources,and the strong organizational cohesion of industry organizations are more conducive to the development of the industry.In addition,the special political,economic and social environment in modern times also promoted or hindered industrial development.In short,the stable and open social and economic environment in the United States has provided a good platform for its industrial development and played a positive role in promoting it.China's turbulent and isolated social and economic environment has to some extent hindered or even imprisoned the further development of the silk industry.Through the comparative analysis of silk industry between China and the United States in modern times,the significance of paying attention to historical periods in economic geography research can also be fully demonstrated. |
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