Local development and innovation policies in China: the experience of Guangdong specialised towns

The complex web of global productive relations that characterizes the economic scenario generates radical changes in the dimension of local competitiveness. This raises new questions about the dynamics of change and upgrading in the industrial clusters and districts, and the governance of the same. In particular, as stressed by several theoretical and empirical contributions, the insertion of enterprises, clusters and localities of industry within global-scale industrial organizations can enhance or limit their possibilities of development, thereby modifying their patterns of growth or decline (Arndt and Kierzkowski 2001). These possibilities are strongly influenced, though not determined, by the dynamics of power distribution along the global value chains (GVCs) in which enterprises and clusters are inserted (Gereffi, et al. 2005; Humphrey and Schmitz 2002), and they may be enhanced by a strategic supportive action implemented by local or supra-local agents. This brings us back to the cluster level, its business and governance structure, its systemic properties, the role played by the different local stakeholders, and the networks of business and institutional links that connect them (Altenburg and Meyer-Stamer 1999). Therefore, the analysis of global and local forces in action needs to be suitably integrated in order to identify the most appropriate policy levers and levels of intervention for promoting cluster upgrading. An interesting laboratory for an understanding of the meshing between local and external forces in the growth of industrial clusters is represented by the Chinese case. The principal findings of a long-term fieldwork study on industrial clusters and specialized towns in Guangdong (China) have offered us deeper insight into this rich variety of forces. The study has highlighted the role played by both foreign enterprises and local reserves of entrepreneurship and competence, as well as the influence of regional policies supporting the development of industrial clusters (Bellandi and Di Tommaso 2005; Caloffi and Hirsch 2005; Bellandi and Caloffi 2008). Building on this base, our analysis of some selected Chinese industrial clusters localized in Guangdong Province aims to shed light on the role played by local policies on cluster upgrading within different business and institutional contexts.