Geographical Concentration of Manufactur ing Industries in China
中国制造业的地理集聚与形成机制

This paper examines the micro foundations of geographical concentration of Chinese manufacturing industries in China at very disaggregated levels using the most recent economic census data. The empirical results indicate that natural advantages, agglomeration economies and institutional changes together influence industrial location in China. Overall, industries bearing higher transportation costs and difficulty to ship are largely dispersed. Resource-based industries follow the pattem of natural advantages and show less agglomeration but metal mineral consuming industries are agglomerated. Trading establishments and foreign enterprises are heavily concentrated, confirming the importance of globalization effects. However, local protectionism has indeed discouraged industrial agglomeration, but provincial governments are more likely to succeed in exercising local protectionism policies and imitation strategy compared to the county governments. Agglomeration economies have done a better job in driving the geographical concentration of Chinese industries at the county level than at the province level. Proxies for knowledge spillovers are highly significant at the county level. The findings suggest that the spatial scale matters in understanding industrial clustering, and economic transition and its consequence are also critical in explaining the spatial pattem of Chinese industries.