Yutao Sun and Seamus Grimes, “China and Global Value Chains” (Routledge, 2018)

Today I was joined by Seamus Grimes from Ireland where he is Emeritus Professor at the National University of Ireland, Galway. With Yutao Sun (Dalian University of Technology), he just published a very interesting and timely book China and Global Value Chains: Globalization and the Information and Communications Technology Sector (Routledge, 2018).

President Trump has raised the intriguing question of bringing the manufacturing of companies like Apple back from China to the U.S. This book, however, argues that in this age of the knowledge-based economy and increased globalization, that value creation and distribution based on knowledge and innovation activities are at the core of economic development. The double-edged sword of globalization has transformed China’s economic development in the past few decades. Although China has benefitted from globalization and is now the second largest economy in the world, having become a global manufacturing power and the biggest exporter of high-tech products, it continues to be highly dependent on foreign sources of capital and technology.

The book explores the core of the Chinese economy from the perspective of the global value chain, combining analysis of inward investment, international trade, science and technology and innovation and economic development. Specifically, it investigates China’s evolving role with some innovative Chinese companies emerging in the global market and China’s ongoing efforts to become an innovation-driven economy.

This is a very interesting book on the complexity of the global industrial systems that are behind the production of the electronic goods that we use daily. Beside China and this specific sector, it is a timely warning for those that argue in favour of raising barriers or regulating otherwise the current flow of goods and components worldwide.

Andrea Bernardi is Senior Lecturer in Employment and Organization Studies at Oxford Brookes University in the UK. He holds a doctorate in Organization Theory from the University of Milan, Bicocca. He has held teaching and research positions in Italy, China and the UK. Among his research interests are the use of history in management studies, the co-operative sector, and Chinese co-operatives. His latest project is looking at health care in rural China. He is the co-convener of the EAEPE’s permanent track on Critical Management Studies.

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