关键词: 经济韧性, 专业化, 相关多样化, 非相关多样化, 专业镇

Abstract:

Since the economic reforms and opening-up, the process of rural industrialization has led to the development of a large number of specialized towns which have significant implications for the Chinese economy. However, due to their labor-intensive, export-oriented and low-tech industrial structure, the economies of the specialized towns became fragile when the financial crisis in 2008 gave rise to a turbulent global market. Specialization of the towns, which used to generate significant effects of localization economies, shows its weakness in coping with the recession after the economic crisis. The sustainable development of the specialized towns in China emerges as an important issue requiring further scholarly enquiry. The newly developed economic resilience theory has provided a valuable and useful framework to explore the development path of the specialized towns, and the article has in turn served as an important empirical study for the theory at the town level. Economic resilience is associated with the capacity to withstand or recover from economic, social, and environmental shocks to its developmental growth path, or to transit to a new, sustainable one. One of the critical factors to shape economic resilience is the attribute of the industrial structure which can define a region’s ability to adjust and adapt to shocks. Despite an ongoing debate on the role played by specialization and variety, it is increasingly agreed that a greater economic diversity is related to a greater resilience of the economies. Based on the panel data of 32 specialized towns in Foshan City and a detailed case study of Xiqiao, a town specialized in textile, this article investigates the relationship between specialization, related/unrelated variety and economic resilience. The regression results suggest that specialization and related variety exert negative effects on economic resilience, whereas unrelated variety plays an active role. Our study supports the argument, which is well-documented in the existing literature, that specialization is more likely to be stuck in negative “lock-in” with adaptation. However, the effect of related variety is not as positive as expected. For low-level labor-intensive industries, their low technology level and weak cooperation among firms have seriously prevented efficient and effective knowledge exchange which is crucial for innovation and resilient ability. The Xiqiao case further indicates that effects of specialization and related variety on economic resilience are limited even the local government has actively intervened in promoting industrial upgrading through a series of approaches such as industrial park construction, labor training, subsidies and other preferential policies. Unrelated variety is conducive to foster the development of new industries, which can help to absorb unemployed labors caused by the shocks and maintain the resilience level. Thus, the specialized towns should consider an industrial structure of greater unrelated variety to boost necessary restructuring process and to engage in new growth paths.

Key words: economic resilience, specialization, related variety, unrelated variety, specialized towns