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Abstract
For regions that are deeply integrated into the global economy, the question of how to remain competitive and resilient in times of uncertainty is a key concern. While strategic coupling is a useful concept for understanding local-global economic dynamics, the idea that a region can simultaneously couple into multiple production networks organised at different spatial scales and that regional actors can increase their autonomy by creatively combining different coupling scenarios has been little explored. This paper explores how regional institutional innovations can facilitate such multiple couplings. We focus on the industrial chain chief model in China's Zhejiang province, which emerged against the backdrop of the U.S.-China trade war and the COVID-19 pandemic. We argue that this institutional innovation offers a different way of thinking for regions that have long been exposed to the influence of globalisation, and that it increases the agency of local actors in global production networks.

AbstractThe article develops an analytical framework for an adaptable and evolutionary pro‐growth coalition led by local government to understand regional industrial transformation in developing China. Taking Kunshan as an example, we argue that evolutionary and adaptable coalitions were key to Kunshan's successful transformation from an agriculture county to an export‐oriented industrial center, and to a more diversified city. The coalition of the local state with land‐holding farmers, domestic and international firms, and the central government during the 1980s‐1990s laid a foundation for industrial transformation; the strong coalition of local state and Taiwanese investors in the 1990s‐2000s shaped its new industry of IT manufacturing; and the coalition of local state with multiple actors at various geographical scales contributed a more diversified and innovative industrial structure of Kunshan. This study highlights that industrial evolution is not only driven by technological relatedness but also by the evolutionary state‐led coalition of multiple actors from different levels and at different stages, and appeals for a political economy perspective to understand industrial transformation of resource‐ scarce regions.

Recent theoretical attempts to understand the dynamics of technological innovation have been based predominantly on the theory of localized knowledge spillover which sees technological innovation as the result of inter-firm interactions in the process of industrial clustering. This study introduces a new analytical framework that goes beyond inter-firm knowledge exchange and highlights the significance of the strategies and selectivity of both the state and firms to understand the dynamics of technological innovation in a transitional economy such as China. A comparative study on the strategies and selectivity of central government, local government, and individual firms in both Shanghai and Shenzhen, the two key city-regions in China, has found that difference in the degree of state-firm strategic coordination- or the dynamic process in which firms' innovation-related strategies are coordinated with the "strategic selectivity" of the central and/or local governments- is a significant factor explaining the regional variation in technological innovation. The Chinese experience demonstrates that the uneven growth of technological innovation has been contingent upon how the state builds a favorable institutional structure and market environment to stimulate, encourage, and support firms' innovative activities and how firms actively respond to the institutional environment created by the state. (Issues Stud/GIGA)

This study critically examines the relevance of the perceived notions of localised production linkages, knowledge spillover and external technology transfer to the experiences of the growth of the ICT industry in China. The research is based on a major firm-level survey conducted in China's three most important mega urban regions—Beijing, Shanghai-Suzhou and Shenzhen-Dongguan—where the bulk of the Chinese ICT industry is located. The results of the survey showed a distinct landscape of ICT industrial production in which each of the Chinese regions has functioned as the site of capital investment from different sources for different strategic interests. Despite a marked regional variation in ownership, industrial structure, market orientation and technological investment, firms in all regions have invariably reported internal development as the main source of core technology. A negative relationship existed between the level of technological innovation and external orientation in both capital investment and export production. No evidence has been found to verify the hypothesis that a higher level of technological innovation would co-exist with stronger production linkages and knowledge exchanges with both local firms and foreign-invested enterprises. A further analysis of the firms with different technological performance has highlighted the significance of regional setting, ownership, ability of capital mobilisation and corporate strategy and management in the process of technological innovation.