Will rural urbanization produce a new producer service space in China?

Anthony G.O. Yeh, Fiona F. Yang*, Zhihua Xu

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articlepeer-review

17 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The spatial relationship between manufacturing and producer services is being significantly weakened in advanced economies because of the decline of manufacturing industries. However, as upstream–downstream industries, manufacturing and producer services have incentives to locate in proximity to each other. In developing countries, such as China, where manufacturing is still an important component of the economy, the evolution of the manufacturing–services relationship and its link to the distribution of producer services have remained unclear. After the economic reforms in 1978, China has experienced a distinctive process of rural industrialization and town development. Will a new producer service space, which is different from that of developed and other developing countries, be produced in China given its development of rural industries? We examine this question by using Guangdong Province, one of China's manufacturing bases and representative regions of rural industrialization, as a case study. Our findings suggest that despite their close input–output linkage, manufacturing and producer services are less likely to co-locate. The development of rural industries has not reduced the importance of large cities and city centers in producer service development. The accelerated economic globalization, the rapid growth of the service sector, and the low-end nature of rural industries have made the manufacturing–services linkage less crucial in determining the location of producer services.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)105-117
Number of pages13
JournalHabitat International
Volume67
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Sept 2017

Scopus Subject Areas

  • Urban Studies

User-Defined Keywords

  • Agglomeration economies
  • China
  • Co-location
  • Input–output relationship
  • Producer services
  • Rural industrialization

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Will rural urbanization produce a new producer service space in China?'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this