The Industrialization of the South of China: Learning and Limits of a Successful Model

La industrialización del sur de China: Aprendizaje y limitaciones de un modelo exitoso.

Rigas Arvaniti y Zhao Wei

Notes

This section relies heavily on our previous article (Wei, Miège and Arvanitis 2003).
Figures vary. Zhang Houyi is counting 1,5 millon in 1999.
Guiheux, 2000: 30.
As is shown by all the work done on Asia (Chaponnière 1985; Chen and Sewell 1996; Choi and Lee 2000; Kim 1997; Lall 1998; Mathews 1999; Shin 1998; Shin 1996)
See for example : (Guiheux 2002a; Guiheux 2002b; Lin 1998; Lowe and Kenney 1998; Wade 1990)
Making any state of the art impossible. A good overview is Dutrénit (2000). As far as we know the manual of Tidd, Pavitt and Bessant (1997) is still one of the best books on this topic.
Innovation as a process experienced by the entreprise, not the result of innovation, which is measured in the economics of innovation literature.
Ernst and Kim, (Ernst and Kim 2002). See also the strong debates in the pages of “Industrial and Corporate Change” between B-A. Lundvall and contenders.
Our model has been used empirically in Venezuela, Brazil, Mexico and China. See Zhao Wei (2000) for an alternate model. Comparison of both models has been proposed by Arvanitis (2000).
We use the word strategic capability for all activities that are linked to the way the company projects its future role, decides its investments, prepares and executes its future course.
And skills in English language will also enhance links to foreign partners.
In fact, most of strategic literature focuses on financial strategies. But learning is not about financial strategies, it is about dealing with real life businesses.
We wish to specially thank professors Qiu Haixiong, Cai He, Wu Nengquan and Xu Yong for their help in setting up these interviews. Interviews were done between January 2000 to Novembre 2002 (HY 12/01/2002, WG 13/1/2002, CZ 11/6/2002, TL 5/11/2002, JL 12/02) with the exception of CB (12/98). Xu Jianniu participated to the interviews in Shuikou. Also thanks to Sun Peidong for translations during fieldwork. Some of the interviews were also translated by Pierre Miège.
China represents 50% of the world production of shoes, most of it is through taiwanese driven companies. See UNIDO report of the Shoe industry.
We visited 12 companies in the district in three travels.
These successful companies are, for the most if not all, collective entreprises. In China collective entreprises were a good way to get the necessary initial infrastructure and not create a company from scratch. Most entreprises that are success stories are collective entreprises, in fact private run businesses, but with a basis in the public sector. It also explains one of the reasons why the state owned entreprises will not be totally eliminated in the future (by dismantlement or privatization). This mixed collective format fits well an economy were the limits between the private sector and the public sector are somehow blurred. For some more time, while the cristallisation of the private sector is still incomplete (Guiheux 2002a), the “collective” enterprise seems a persistent figure. Moreover, the question of property rights is getting important when entreprises become really very big.