Competitive dynamics and economic growth in China : the case of Shenzhen

• Autor(a) principal: Vardaro, Flavia
• Data de Publicação: 2020
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.14/31217
• topic: Competitiveness; China; Shenzhen; Clusters; Innovation; Economic growth; Competitividade; Inovação; Crescimento económico; Domínio/Área Científica::Ciências Sociais::Economia e Gestão

China is poised to become one of the dominant economic forces in the world and today with the ability to affect the financial stability of every country in an interconnected global system of trade and finance. This study was conducted to understand what incentives, structural and social and political phenomena shaped the competitive dynamics leading to meteoric economic growth in China. Cities and clusters is where state and market forces interact most directly; to understand key insights, patterns of growth, future risks and opportunities we decided to focus the analysis on the case of Shenzhen, China’s fastest-growing, experimental city. Since there are numerous theories and frameworks to understand competitive dynamics, we created a threelayered conceptual taxonomy of 16 index variables based on salient aspects that emerged from an extensive literature review. To gain further qualitative understanding of the proposed conceptual model, we conducted a survey distributed to people living and working in Shenzhen and China. The research found the major causal factor for extraordinary economic growth was central and local government adaptive efficiency which ushered in reforms and capital injections from Beijing. Shenzhen is a striking example of successful competitive dynamics and market-oriented reforms. However, factors like the debt burden, lack of transparency, corruption within institutions and fragile foreign affairs are likely to impact the long-term competitive sustainability.