,Towards global economic geographies: Strategic Coupling and Global Production Networks Research: An editorial for Geographical Research “Special Issue on Global Production Networks and Strategic Coupling in China”
Henry Wai-chung YEUNG,收稿日期:2021-11-4接受日期:2021-11-10
Received:2021-11-4Accepted:2021-11-10
作者简介 About authors
Henry Wai-chung YEUNG（1968-）,男,新加坡籍华人（祖籍中国广东）,杰出教授,研究方向为跨企业、全球生产网络与价值链、东亚发展中国家与全球经济。E-mail:
Abstract
In retrospect, the discovery of “strategic coupling” and its further conceptual development was serendipitous in nature, when several of us became frustrated with then the rather inward-looking debate about endogenous learning and new regionalism in economic geography and regional studies. Ann Markusen found many concepts in this new regionalism literature rather fuzzy and hard to operationalize in empirical research. We wanted to “globalize” this inward-looking approach to regional transformation and thus the concept was “born”, as part of GPN 1.0 framework, to describe how and why the global can be strategically “coupled” with the local through global production networks. In my book Strategic Coupling, I demonstrate much further the concept's empirical efficacy in explaining the industrial transformation of East Asian economies in the new global economy. Again, my aim was to challenge the predominant and inward-looking narrative that this transformation had been driven primarily by the developmental state in East Asia.
Throughout the 2010s and thereafter, the concept “strategic coupling” has been hotly debated within the broad fields of economic geography, regional studies, international political economy, international business studies, and development studies. Many empirical studies across the social sciences and in East Asian studies have found the concept relevant to their diverse empirical analyses and explanations of local, regional, and national developmental trajectories in the changing world economy. In particular, most of these studies have deployed the concept to account for investment and technological linkages between local and foreign firms, cluster formation and evolution, industrial upgrading and regional change, transformations in local and regional innovation systems, urban and regional restructuring under globalization, and so on. These inter-disciplinary studies have not only added much empirical validity to the concept itself and the broader GPN 2.0 theory, but also provided further opportunities for us to take the concept to new domains and intellectual heights.
In this spirit of the broadening appeal and relevance of “strategic coupling”, I have titled this editorial as “Towards global economic geographies” to encourage a more global understanding of the changing realities of economies geographies-defined both as an intellectual discipline within human geography and as the empirical world in which economic activities take place. As an intellectual discipline, global economic geographies is becoming particularly vibrant in the early 2020s. There is now a great deal of convergence of conceptual work on evolutionary economic geography, GPN research, financial geographies, and labour geographies. These are exciting times for highly productive cross-fertilizations in our collective intellectual endeavours.
The empirical papers in this special issue of Geographical Research illustrate very well such strong tendencies towards integrated theoretical framing that draws upon not only the concept “strategic coupling” and GPN 2.0 theory, but also cutting-edge ideas in evolutionary economic geography, financial geographies, and labour geographies. The variegated empirical contexts of China also provide different sub-national “laboratories” that enable such cross-fertilizations to demonstrate their empirical relevance. The next step, though, is for these studies and voices from China to “speak back” to those fields within global economic geographies and, if possible, to add more theoretical contributions through what George Lin and I termed “theorizing back” almost two decades ago. I am happy to see that this special issue has systematically introduced and interpreted on the theorization of GPN 2.0. In line with two previous papers published in this journal about the progress of relational economic geography, the theories about strategic coupling have been well articulated for economic geographers in China.
As the always-changing empirical world, global economic geographies in the 2020s are undergoing fundamental transformations due to several recent and unprecedented challenges, from the Covid-19 pandemic to rising geopolitical tensions and severe disruptions to global supply chains and global production networks. All of these changing global economic geographies provide enormous possibilities for us not only to test our existing theories and concepts, but also to identify new ideas and thinking. As I have argued in a forthcoming book, the interconnected worlds of yesteryear's global economic geographies might be giving way to, or intertwined with, the unexpected reversal of economic globalization and the incessant demand for regional and national resilience in a world of heightened uncertainty. These empirical trends towards localization and regionalization in global economic geographies will likely kickstart new rounds of strategic (de)couplings worldwide such that the restless landscape of contemporary capitalism, as argued a longtime ago in Storper and Walker's The Capitalist Imperative, will be reshaped and reorganized again. This time though, I believe East Asia, and China in particular, may well take the lead to re-Orient the global economy in its image.
Looking forward, I hope readers of this special issue will gain both theoretical and empirical insights from these 15 well-crafted papers that address China's strategic coupling with the global economy in relation to its local and regional resilience, industrial and social upgrading, foreign investment and labour market dynamics, external trade and GPN risks, the challenge of technological innovation and intellectual property, building urban and regional clusters, and so on. As Chairman Mao said in his 1957 address in Beijing, “Letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend”. I believe the original concept “strategic coupling” and thereafter GPN 2.0 theory might well be one such flower and school of thought that can be much further contended through our collective research in and on global economic geographies. May thousand flowers blossom!
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本文引用格式
楊偉聰. 奔向全球的经济地理：战略耦合与全球生产网络研究——“全球生产网络与中国战略耦合”专辑序言[J]. 地理研究, 2021, 40(12): 3253-3258 doi:
Henry Wai-chung YEUNG.
楊偉聰教授
进入21世纪以来,全球生产网络（Global Production Network,GPN）研究非常深刻地展现了Peter Dicken所描绘的“全球-地方矛盾”。这个概念由Dicken在1994年发表于《Economic Geography》上的Roepke Lecture 特邀文章中首次提出[1]。作为过去20多年经济地理学的一个主要学术支柱,GPN研究经历了两个重要的理论发展阶段,即从早期的广泛而一般的GPN框架[2-4],过渡到更加具备解释性的GPN 2.0理论[5-7]。在GPN研究理论快速发展的这个时期里,Coe等首先提出了“战略耦合”这一关键而新颖的概念[4],并由Yeung对其进行了完善[8-10]。时至今日,这一概念已经成为人文地理学对整个社会科学“出口”的最富有竞争力的概念之一。尽管全球价值链理论（Global Value Chain,GVC）,特别是关于治理类型的研究,也具有重大影响,但其并未提供类似的核心概念[11-13]。
回顾往昔,“战略耦合”概念的发现及其发展具有偶然性。当时我们对于经济地理学和区域研究中关于内生学习和新区域主义的内生性思潮倍感沮丧[14]。Ann Markusen发现新区域主义研究中的许多概念相当模糊,且难以应用到实证研究中[15]。我们希望将这种内生性的区域转型方法推向全球化,于是“战略耦合”的概念应运而生。作为GPN 1.0框架的一部分,该概念描述了全球如何以及为何可以通过全球生产网络与本地进行战略性的“耦合”。在《Strategic Coupling》一书中,我进一步阐明了战略耦合概念在解释新的全球经济格局下东亚经济体产业转型的实证效力[10]。这本书的目标是要挑战关于“东亚产业转型主要由发展型国家推动”这一具有内生化倾向的主流思想。
过去十多年,“战略耦合”概念在经济地理学[16-20]、区域研究[9,14,21]、国际政治经济学[22-24]、国际商业研究[13]和发展研究[25]等领域得到了高度关注,并展开了激烈的争论。许多社会科学和东亚地区相关的实证研究发现,“战略耦合”的概念与他们对世界经济变化中地方、区域和国家发展轨迹的各种实证分析和解释息息相关。特别是这些研究都将这一概念用于解释本地和外国公司之间的种种互动,例如投资和技术联系、集群的形成和演变、产业升级和区域转型、地方和区域创新系统转型、全球化下的城市和区域重组等等。这些跨学科的研究不仅为概念本身和更广泛的GPN 2.0理论增加了许多实证有效性,而且为我们将这一概念带到新的领域和知识高度提供了新机会。
本着扩大“战略耦合”的吸引力和影响力的考虑,我将这篇序言命名为“奔向全球的经济地理”,以鼓励我们对持续变化的经济地理能够获得更加全球性的理解。此处所言的“经济地理”,既是人文地理学中的一门学科,也是经济活动发生的现实世界。作为一门学科,全球经济地理学自进入21世纪以来变得尤为活跃,目前已有大量关于演化经济地理学、全球生产网络研究、金融地理学和劳动地理学的理论融合工作,这些激动人心的成果,是经济地理****们进行高度交叉融合研究的卓越结晶。
本期的《地理研究》,以专刊的形式刊载一系列实证研究,充分体现了这种理论框架整合的强烈趋势。这些框架不仅运用了“战略耦合”的概念和GPN 2.0理论,还整合了多个学科的前沿理论、不同流派的视角以及定性定量方法,也覆盖了中国主要的区域。中国广泛的、多样化的实践背景为我们营造了天然的区域“实验室”,使这种交叉融合的学术成果能够从实践中验证其影响力[26,27]。下一步是如何让这些来自中国的研究和声音“回响”到全球经济地理研究中,并在可能的情况下,通过二十年前林初昇教授和我提出的“理论回溯”的方式,做出更多理论贡献[28]。我也很高兴地看到,本次专刊对GPN 2.0理论的演进脉络进行了系统的探讨,结合此前贵刊所发表的关系经济地理的研究评述[29,30],“战略耦合”的理论体系已经较为完整地呈现在了中国****面前。
现实世界正处于不断变幻之中,特别是由于最近出现了一些前所未有的挑战,从新型冠状病毒肺炎（Covid-19）大流行,到地缘政治紧张局势加剧,再到全球供应链和全球生产网络遭受严重打击,全球经济地理正在经历着根本性的转变。这些不断变化的全球经济地理现象为我们提供了巨大的可能性,不仅可以检验现有的理论和概念,还可能催生新的思想和思维。正如我在即将出版的著作中所言[31],传统的全球经济地理格局所孕育的相互关系,可能正被经济全球化中种种预期之外的逆流所替代,或者与之交错发展。与此同时,来自高度不确定的区域和国家日益加剧的复苏需求,正让这个过程变得更加错综复杂。这些正在发生的本地化和区域化的趋势可能会在全球范围内触发新一轮的战略（去）耦合,从而使Storper等在《The Capitalist Imperative》中所描述的当代资本主义的动荡景象,将被重新塑造和组织[32]。不过我相信,这一次很可能是东亚,尤其是中国,将按照其愿景引领（re-Orient）全球的经济重组。
展望未来,我希望本次专辑的读者能够从这15篇精挑细选的论文中获得理论和实证的洞察。这些论文覆盖了中国与全球经济耦合过程中的地方和区域韧性、产业和社会升级、海外投资和劳动力市场动态、对外贸易和全球生产网络风险、技术创新和知识产权方面的挑战、城市和区域集群建设等。正如1957年毛泽东主席在北京的一次讲话中所言——“百花齐放,百家争鸣”。我相信最初的“战略耦合”概念和随后孕育出的GPN 2.0理论,有望成为这样一朵花和一个思想流派,在我们对全球经济地理现象的探索,及对这个学科领域的集体研究中更上一层楼。愿万花齐放！
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在回顾经济地理学中较为前沿的战略耦合概念的起源、发展与研究现状的基础上,对战略耦合研究的优点与问题展开评述,认为当前研究在战略耦合模式的探讨中,主要基于经验总结而缺乏对影响变量,特别是空间变量的阐述,存在一定的模糊性。为理解该问题的根源,追溯了全球生产网络和全球价值链两个学派的争论和最新进展。在认可全球价值链理论解释力的同时,认为当前全球生产网络2.0版本的研究框架仍然没有解决模糊性的问题,而且全球生产网络的分析框架主要侧重于主导企业视角来构建战略耦合的发生机制,忽略了后发地区和企业的主动性。因此,借鉴传统经济地理学研究,充分考虑主导企业和后发地区的行为逻辑,提出经济活动的空间粘性和区域的区位优势这两个变量,重构了战略耦合的分析框架,并进行理论阐述。该项理论构建有助于更好地厘清战略耦合的发生机制,帮助发展中国家和地区判读发展机遇,确立产业发展与升级战略。
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关系经济地理学是当前经济地理学界的主要流派之一,当前国内研究对该流派中的全球生产网络分析框架较为熟悉,但是对流派本身的认识不足。本文全面回顾了该流派的缘起、孕育、成型和深化拓展的历程,对存在问题展开评述。主要得到三个结论：① 关系经济地理有鲜明的地理学科特色,是全球化研究不可或缺的中坚力量,是提升经济地理学科地位的重要支撑。② 关系经济地理当前的理论模型存在体系复杂、变量过多的问题,同时核心解释变量缺乏完整的理论推导逻辑,依然需要靠案例来完善实证,而无法定量测度。③ 当前****已经在国际期刊上基于中国实践进行理论修补与创新,为我们提供了良好的示范。本文为此评述了两个系列的研究,评述基于中国实践进行理论创新的方法和路径。本文有助于推动中国经济地理研究的国际化,对探讨中国经济发展实践经验的理论创新,有着积极的科学意义。
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