Local Dynamics of Industrial Upgrading

Yi Liu is an Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Tourism Management and Planning at the School of Tourism Management, Sun Yat-sen University, China. He obtained his Ph.D. degree in Economic Geography from the National University of Singapore in 2012. His research interests include economic geography and globalization, transnational corporations, global production networks, industrial upgrading and tourism-economic geography. He has published more than 20 academic papers in various high-impact SSCI/SCI journals, including Regional Studies Tourism Management, Urban Geography, and Eurasian Geography and Economics, which have focused on the evolutionary political economy, new developmental models and the trajectories of regional development in China.

• Introduction.- Unpacking the geography of industrial upgrading.- The interaction between strategic coupling and industrial upgrading: a framework.- Industrial upgrading and evolutionary strategic coupling in the Pearl River Delta.- Captive coupling in the electronics industry: relocation, localization and local upgrading.- Local upgrading in the apparel industry: from captive coupling to cooperative coupling.- Reciprocal coupling and industrial upgrading in the automotive industry: the balance of interplay.- The Geographies of Industrial Upgrading.