Abstract
The stagnation of multinational and cross-regional goods circulation has created significant disruptions to manufacturing supply chains due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. To explore the impact of COVID-19 on the circulation of manufacturing industry products at different geographical scales, we drew upon a case study of development zones in the city of Weifang in China to analyze the characteristics of firms’ logistics networks in these development zones, and how these characteristics have changed since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The data used in this study were collected from fieldwork conducted between 26 August 2020 and 15 October 2020, and included the supply originations of firms’ manufacturing sources and the sales destinations of their goods. We chose the two-mode network analysis method as our study methodology, which separates the logistics networks into supply networks and sales networks. The results show the following: First, the overall structure of firms’ logistics networks in Weifang’s development zones is characterized by localization. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the local network links have further strengthened, whereas the global links have seriously declined. Moreover, the average path length of both the supply and sales logistics networks has slightly decreased, indicating the increased connectivity of the logistics networks. Second, in terms of the network node centrality, the core nodes of the supply logistics networks are the development zones and the city in which the firms are located, whereas the core nodes of the sales logistics networks are the core companies in the development zones. However, since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the centrality of supply originations and sales destinations at the local scale has increased, whereas the centrality of supply originations and sales destinations at the global scale has decreased significantly. Third, the influencing factors of such changes include controlling personnel and goods circulation based on national boundaries and administrative boundaries, forcing the logistics networks in the development zones to shrink to the local scale. Moreover, there are differences in the scope of spatial contraction between supply logistics networks and the sales logistics networks.
Highlights
IntroductionWith the rapid development of economic globalization, goods circulation across the world has been gradually strengthened since the 1980s
The study results show that the overseas supply originations are the most unstable part of the firms’ supply logistics networks in the development zones in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the import and export disruptions directly affect the survival of small foreign trade companies
We illustrate a phenomenon of global contraction and local strengthening of firms’ logistics networks during the COVID-19 outbreak, by analyzing the most typical type of industrial space in China, highlighting current logistical trends
Summary
With the rapid development of economic globalization, goods circulation across the world has been gradually strengthened since the 1980s. With the increasingly fierce market competition, the profit space of the production and operation of enterprises is shrinking, forcing enterprises to shift profit space towards logistics, which is often referred to as the “third-party profit headspring” [1]. Due to the outbreak of COVID-19, the amount of international trade barriers continues to increase [2], and the lockdown measures adopted by many countries have resulted in the stagnation of product manufacturing and logistics [3,4] and a dramatic impact on the international circulation of goods [5]. Research on logistics networks from a spatial perspective has become increasingly important
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