Industry Associations as Facilitators of Industrial Upgrading in China: Performance and Factors
Industry associations play a vital role in compensating for government failures and market failures in economic development. Some scholars have conducted in-depth research into the common contributing factors of the performance of industry associations in various countries’ economic development: institutional capacity and external enforcement. They discovered that strong institutional capacity is the prerequisite of high performance, while external enforcement disciplines associations’ leader to use strong institutional capacity for ill and channels it into more efficient activities of industry associations. But they fail to realize that external enforcement can also be not just the discipline but decisive factor of institutional capacity. Furthermore, they fail to analyze the mechanism of industry associations promoting economic development. This paper attempts to carry out further research into industry associations within the framework of Chinese experience with a view to testing the performance of industry associations in promoting economic development and reconstructing its contributing factors’ intrinsic relationship. In the first stage, empirical research reveals that China’s industry associations play a constructive role in industrial upgrading during the period of the transformation of economic development patterns in China. On one hand, it substantiates the positive effect of the institutional capacity of industry associations. On the other hand, they have yet to fully explain the performance of specific functions of industry associations. In the second stage, empirical studies into 10 industry associations manifest that industrial statuses and government support are two core factors influencing the contributions of industry associations to promoting industrial upgrading in China. As an authoritarian regime, the high centralization of Chinese government exerts a profound effect on the performance of industry associations in industrial upgrading. The higher industrial status enables the association of the sector to extract more public and government resources so as to propel industrial upgrading. Nonetheless, although industry associations can attain economic self-governance and carry more effective activities through the development of industrial status, the high centralization and monopoly of resources renders it possible that governments guide the direction of economic development. Governments’ preference and guidance produce a profound influence on the performance of industry associations in promoting industrial upgrading, which can be realized either by improving the institutional capacity or by offering direct selective incentives in the following ways: policy support, government purchase and the transference of government functions.
industry associations industrial upgrading performance contributing factors Chinas experience
Jianxing Yu Yongdong Shen
国际会议
上海
英文
1-24
2012-05-25（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）