Localization, regionalization, and domesticalization of satellite industrial platform and urban transformation: A case study of Dongguan in the Pearl River Delta, China

Abstract

Satellite industrial platforms, a type of industrial district with a congregation of branch facilities of externally based multi-plant firms, have been undergoing a new wave of industrial, organizational, and geographical restructuring over the last decade worldwide. Given the inadequate understanding of the causal relationship between industrial district restructuring and urban transformation, this study uses Dongguan, a satellite industrial platform in the Pearl River Delta of southern China from the 1980s to 1990s, as a case study to examine the restructuring process from 2005 to 2020 and its resulting impacts on urban transformation. First, the restructuring of Dongguan from a satellite industrial platform to a multiscale embedded industrial complex is characterized by declining exogenous forces (e.g., Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and export) and rising domestic intervention and local embeddedness. Second, the restructuring of Dongguan away from a satellite industrial platform is a hybrid process of changes in the localization of suppliers, territorial embeddedness of transnational corporations, regionalization of high-technology complexes, and orchestration of national production networks and their realignment toward the domestic market. Third, the restructuring of Dongguan from a satellite industrial platform to a multiscale embedded industrial complex has led to urban transformation in social structure, spatial configuration, and living environment beyond the “exogenous urbanization model”. This study seeks to advance the understanding on the restructuring process of satellite industrial platforms in light of evolving global, national, and local circumstances and their resulting urban transformation.