Reassembling local-regional industrial networks towards sustainability: an evolving “eco-transformation arena” in a Chinese industrial district

Abstract

This paper investigates a pathway for transforming small and medium enterprise-based industrial districts to eco-industrial development in newly industrialised countries. Our framework conceptualises the eco-transformation of industrial districts as a reassembling process of local-regional industrial networks toward sustainability from an ‘arenas of development’ perspective, highlighting how an emerging eco-transformation arena may challenge existing unsustainable industrial networks. We employ a case-study method to illuminate how such an eco-transformation arena has emerged in Shunde District in Southern China and evolved in the dimensions of continuity, scale and depth of transformation. The results show the pathway is driven by national policy intervention and local government responses. The subsequent development is likely to shift into a fluid, non-linear process unfolded through the continuing interaction of agenda setting, actors and their relationships, strategies and actions performed, translation projects and spaces of negotiation (i.e. the arena’s five components) while being influenced by context and place-specificity.

Keywords:

• Arenas of development
• eco-transformation
• industrial districts
• regional industrial ecology
• small and medium enterprise (SME)

Acknowledgements

We appreciate the valuable comments and suggestions from the editor and the anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplemental data

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Notes

1 In this paper, “industrial sites” means small and spatially scattered industrial areas before transformation. In China, high-level and large-scale industrial areas and the transformed and upgraded industrial sites are called “industrial parks”.

2 China’s industrial parks have different political levels, and the importance of the parks are differentiated according to their backing: national/state-level (backed by the central government), provincial-level, municipal-level, district-level, town-level, or even village-level or privately invested development.

3 Village-level industrial sites, officially named “Village and township industrial agglomeration area”, refer to industrial sites or contiguous industrial areas (more than 5 ha) built on rural collective-owned land.

4 Circular Transformation of Industrial Parks is a programme initiated by the Chinese National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Finance in 2012. This programme defines the concept of “Circular Transformation of Industrial Parks” as “the strategy based on a circular economy concept […], reducing, recycling and reusing industrial wastes […] and ultimately realising ‘zero-emission’ of wastes and sustainable development of industrial areas”.

5 A definition of “eco-civilisation” presented on the United Nations Environment Program website is “an ethical morality and ideology which realizes harmonious co-existence and sustainable development both among people and between them and nature and society, reflecting the progress of civilisation”.

6 An economic organization for villagers to manage collective physical assets (e.g. land and property) in China.

7 Local governments can receive multiple support from obtaining these titles, including institutional, financial and nominal support.

8 As the US-China trade war heats up, the US and Japan are trying to decouple their production networks from China, making Chinese central and provincial governments focus more on developing advanced manufacturing and have introduced measures around the theme of “high-quality development”. “High-quality development” refers to China’s “high-speed” economic development shift towards the high-quality phase.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Research Sustainability of Major RGC Funding Schemes 2018–2019.