关键词: 关系经济地理, 全球生产网络, 嵌入性, 中国实践, 理论创新

Abstract:

Relational economic geography is one of the most influential schools of studies in economic geography. Many economic geographers of China have recognized and applied its key analytic framework, the alleged Global Production Network, whereas they have seldom tackled on the perspective of relational economic geography. By identifying this theoretical gap, this paper critically reviews the origin, development, formation and recent refinement of the school of relational economic geography. It has three major conclusions. First, this paper affirms that relational economic geography has salient geographical nature, though it deals with relation, and has become a core strand of studies in the research of economic globalization, regional development and industrial upgrading. It has positively improved the relevance of economic geography in various disciplines such as development studies, international political economy and management. Second, the existing problems of relational economic geography rest in the complexity of the analytic framework and research variables which include a lot of factors, process and mechanisms. The typology of strategic coupling, the central explanatory variable, is mainly derived from empirical observation and lacks of theoretical deduction. In the meantime, studies in this school so far still heavily rely on qualitative approaches, such as case studies, after forty years of development. Third, this paper argues that theorizing back based on China's reform and opening-up in the past forty years via the perspective of relational economic geography is quite innovative and valuable. To this vein, a few Chinese geographers have made great attempts and got publications in various decent international journals. This paper offers a critique on two series of studies to elaborate how to make theoretical contribution to relational economic geography based on China's experiences. One is related to the concept of embeddedness and firm-state relationship in the transitional institutional environment in China. The other is the investigation of strategic coupling in major regional economies in China. All these studies have shown great potentials of using China's experiences to revise and advance the western-origin theories in economic geography. This paper would have salient implications for improving international relevance of the economic geography of China, as well as theoretical innovation based on China's experiences.

Key words: relational economic geography, global production network, embeddedness, China's experiences, theoretical innovation