Distribution System of China's Industrial Clusters: Case Study of Yiwu China Commodity City

This paper discusses the issue of upgrading industrial clusters from the perspective of external linkages. It is taken for granted that in most developing countries, due to the limited domestic market and poor traditional commercial networks, industrial clusters are able to upgrade only when they are involved in global value chains. However, the rise of China’s industrial clusters challenges this view. Historically, China has had a lot of industrial clusters with their own traditional commercial networks. This fact combined with its huge population resulted in the formation of a unique external linage to China’s industrial clusters after the socialist planning period ended. In concrete terms, since the 1980s, a traditional commercial institution . the transaction market . began to appear in most clusters. These markets within the clusters get connected to those in the cities due to interaction between traditional merchants and local governments. This has resulted in the formation of a powerful market network-based distribution system which has played a crucial role for China’s industrial clusters in responding to exploding domestic demand. This paper explains these features in detail, using Yiwu China Commodity City as a case study.

Factors Underlying the Formation of Industrial Clusters in Japan and Industrial Cluster Policy: A Quantitative Survey

The purpose of this report is to use information provided by a questionnaire survey to analyze the factors and processes underlying the formation of industrial clusters in Japan. The study, based on questionnaire surveys, forms part of an "Industrial Cluster Project". The Japanese government has implemented policies for industrial clusters so as to enable Japanese industries to maintain competitive power in global markets, and to aid the self-sufficient expansion of local industries. The government's project goes under the heading "Industry Agglomeration for the Recovery of Local Industries with respect to so-called "Industry Clusters." The authors aim to identify what expectations are held of government by the enterprises that make up industrial clusters. As part of our investigation, we used the results of a survey conducted by UNDP in 2004. Tsuji's study, published by the Osaka School of International Public Policy, surveyed 1198 small or medium sized manufacturing companies located in O ward, Tokyo and Higashi Osaka city, Osaka prefecture. The outcome of the present study, together with data from Tsuji's work on IT usage by SMEs in Japan, is meant to form the basis for policy design and implementation.

Regional Cooperation of Small & Medium Firms in Japanese Industrial Clusters

This study examines the effects of intra-regional cooperation among firms and institutions on the growth of firms, using the unique data set of questionnaire survey collected in the three major industrial clusters in Japan. In contrast to the existing studies on regional innovations or agglomeration economies, this study explicitly focuses on the detailed contents of cooperative activities with two specific viewpoints: 1) the contents of regional cooperation in each of the three production stages of R&D, commercialization, and marketing, and 2) the detailed types of alliance partners. Our results demonstrate three points: 1) positive correlations are observed between the intensity of regional cooperation and the firm growth rate and R&D expenditure, 2) horizontal cooperation such as alliances with universities and cross-industry exchange organizations has positive significant effects on the growth rate of firms, which is in contrast with the previous studies that stressed only the role of vertically integrated inter-firm linkages in Japan, and 3) contents and partners of regional cooperation are different among the three clusters based on different dominant industries.

IT Clusters in India

One of the facilitating factors that enabled the rise of IT industry in India is the evolution of IT clusters. A study of these clusters can provide interesting insights. The rise of the Banglaore IT cluster was due, among other things, to some of the policies the Indian government took three decades or earlier. It would be difficult to talk of "benign neglect" of the government towards this sector. Different factors worked in the case of Hyderabad. A comparison between the IT clusters in India has much to tell the new emerging IT clusters in India as well as those outside of it.

Clusters and Innovation: Beijing's Hi-technology Industry Cluster and Guangzhou's Automobile Industry Cluster

This paper proposes a flowchart approach to the automobile industry cluster policy and the hi-technology industry cluster policy to prioritize policy measures. First, in the automobile industry cluster, suppliers of parts and components to anchor firms such as Honda, Nissan and Toyota of Japanese assembly makers in Guangzhou, China, can innovate partly because the suppliers have become independent of their anchor firms in the Japanese Keiretsu system. Second, concerning the hi-technology industry clustering in Beijing, we show that the existence of universities is a precondition for the industrial cluster policy and that the leadership of the Zhongguancun Science Park Management Committee of Beijing Municipality is crucial to the success of the industrial cluster policy. The flowchart for the hi-technology industry is different from the one for the automobile industry cluster.

Industrial Clusters in India: Evidence from Automobile Clusters in Chennai and the National Capital Region

This study analyzes the patterns of agglomeration of some modern manufacturing sectors in India, and in particular the Indian automobile sector. It also examines and contrasts the factors that have led to different patterns of cluster development in two leading auto clusters in India-Chennai and the National Capital Region (NCR). Moreover, the study analyzes whether firms in clusters perform better than those that are excluded and whether the relative importance of variables that determine the behavior of firms differs among clusters. Our analyses, which employ a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, show that Indian industrial clusters are largely concentrated in the three clustered regions: NCR, Mumbai-Pune, and Chennai-Bangalore, across different manufacturing sectors. Our study of the auto clusters in Chennai and the NCR find considerable differences in the patterns of cluster formation, due partly to the historical and policy conditions under which firms, particularly, the lead firms must operate. Moreover, our econometric analyses confirmed that being part of a cluster positively influences the performance of the auto component firms and those belonging to a cluster perform better.

Chapter 7 Clusters of Modern and Local Industries in Vietnam

Since the introduction of the Doi Moi ('renovation') economic reform in 1986, Vietnam has experienced a transformation of its economic management, from a central planning economy to a market-oriented economy. High economic growth, created by the liberalization of activities in all sectors of the economy, has changed the economic structure of the country, and the once agriculture-based and poverty-stricken land now generates a midlevel income and possesses many industrial bases. Economic growth has also changed the landscape of the country. Business complexes have been built in metropolises like Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi, and rice fields have been converted into industrial zones. As the number of enterprises increased, areas began to emerge where many enterprises agglomerated. Some of these 'clusters' were groups of cottage industry households, while many others were large-scale industrial clusters. As Porter [1998] argues, industrial clusters are the source of a nation's 'competitive advantage'. McCarty et al. [2005] indicate that in some key industries in Vietnam, some clusters of enterprises have been created, although the degree of agglomeration differs from one industry to another. Using industry census data from 2001, they include dot density maps for the 12 leading manufacturing industries in Vietnam. They show that most of the industries analyzed are clustered either in Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City (or both). Among these 12 industries, the garments industry has the greatest tendency to cluster, followed by textile, rice, seafood, and paper industries. The fact that industrial clusters have begun to form in some areas could be a positive sign for Vietnam's future economic development. What is lacking in McCarty et al. [2005], however, is the identification of the participants in the industrial clusters. Some argue for the importance of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Vietnam's economic development (e.g. Nguyen Tri Thanh [2007], Tran Tien Cuong et al. [2008]), while others stress the impact of foreign direct investments (FDI) (for example, Tuan Bui [2009]). Adding information about the participants in the above cluster study (and in other studies of spatial patterns of location of enterprises) may broaden the scope for analysis of economic development in Vietnam. This study aims to reveal the characteristics of industrial clusters in terms of their participants and locations. The findings of the study may provide basic information for evaluating the effects of agglomeration and the robustness of the effects in the industrial clusters in Vietnam. Section 1 describes the characteristics of economic entities in Vietnam such as ownership, size of enterprise, and location. Section 2 examines qualitative aspects of industrial clusters identified in McCarty et al. [2005] and uses information on the size and ownership of clusters. Three key industries (garments, consumer electronics, and motor vehicle) are selected for the study. Section 3 identifies another type of cluster commonly seen in Vietnam, composed of local industries and called 'craft villages'. Many such villages have been developed since the early 1990s. The study points out that some of these villages have become industrialized (or are becoming industrialized) by introducing modern modes of production and by employing thousands of laborers.

Determination of the average ionization and thermodynamic regimes of xenon plasmas with an application to the characterization of blast waves launched in xenon clusters

Radiative shock waves play a pivotal role in the transport energy into the stellar medium. This fact has led to many efforts to scale the astrophysical phenomena to accessible laboratory conditions and their study has been highlighted as an area requiring further experimental investigations. Low density material with high atomic mass is suitable to achieve radiative regime, and, therefore, low density xenon gas is commonly used for the medium in which the radiative shock propagates. In this work the averageionization and the thermodynamicregimes of xenonplasmas are determined as functions of the matter density and temperature in a wide range of plasma conditions. The results obtained will be applied to characterize blastwaveslaunched in xenonclusters

The role of a firm's absorptive capacity and the technology transfer process in clusters: How effective are technology centres in low-tech clusters?

This paper analyses how the internal resources of small- and medium-sized enterprises determine access (learning processes) to technology centres (TCs) or industrial research institutes (innovation infrastructure) in traditional low-tech clusters. These interactions basically represent traded (market-based) transactions, which constitute important sources of knowledge in clusters. The paper addresses the role of TCs in low-tech clusters, and uses semi-structured interviews with 80 firms in a manufacturing cluster. The results point out that producer–user interactions are the most frequent; thus, the higher the sector knowledge-intensive base, the more likely the utilization of the available research infrastructure becomes. Conversely, the sectors with less knowledge-intensive structures, i.e. less absorptive capacity (AC), present weak linkages to TCs, as they frequently prefer to interact with suppliers, who act as transceivers of knowledge. Therefore, not all the firms in a cluster can fully exploit the available research infrastructure, and their AC moderates this engagement. In addition, the existence of TCs is not sufficient since the active role of a firm's search strategies to undertake interactions and conduct openness to available sources of knowledge is also needed. The study has implications for policymakers and academia.

Stability of vacancy clusters in FeCr alloys: A study of the Cr concentration dependence

Fe–Cr based alloys are the leading structural material candidates in the design of next generation reactors due to their high resistance to swelling and corrosion. Despite these good properties there are others, such as embrittlement, which require a higher level of understanding in order to improve aspects such as safety or lifetime of the reactors. The addition of Cr improves the behavior of the steels under irradiation, but not in a monotonic way. Therefore, understanding the changes in the Fe–Cr based alloys microstructure induced by irradiation and the role played by the alloying element (Cr) is needed in order to predict the response of these materials under the extreme conditions they are going to support. In this work we perform a study of the effect of Cr concentration in a bcc Fe–Cr matrix on formation and binding energies of vacancy clusters up to 5 units. The dependence of the calculated formation and binding energy is investigated with two empirical interatomic potentials specially developed to study radiation damage in Fe–Cr alloys. Results are very similar for both potentials showing an increase of the defect stability with the cluster size and no real dependence on Cr concentration for the binding energy.

Analysis of microscopic magnitudes of radiative blast waves launched in xenon clusters with collisional-radiative steady-state simulations

Radiative shock waves play a pivotal role in the transport energy into the stellar medium. This fact has led to many efforts to scale the astrophysical phenomena to accessible laboratory conditions and their study has been highlighted as an area requiring further experimental investigations. Low density material with high atomic mass is suitable to achieve radiative regime, and, therefore, low density xenon gas is commonly used for the medium in which the radiative shocks such as radiative blast waves propagate. In this work, by means of collisional-radiative steady-state calculations, a characterization and an analysis of microscopic magnitudes of laboratory blast waves launched in xenon clusters are made. Thus, for example, the average ionization, the charge state distribution, the cooling time or photon mean free paths are studied. Furthermore, for a particular experiment, the effects of the self-absorption and self-emission in the specific intensity emitted by the shock front and that is going through the radiative precursor are investigated. Finally, for that experiment, since the electron temperature is not measured experimentally, an estimation of this magnitude is made both for the shock shell and the radiative precursor.

Determination and analysis of plasma radiative properties for numerical simulations of laboratory radiative blast waves launched in xenon clusters

Radiative shock waves play a pivotal role in the transport energy into the stellar medium. This fact has led to many efforts to scale the astrophysical phenomena to accessible laboratory conditions and their study has been highlighted as an area requiring further experimental investigations. Low density material with high atomic mass is suitable to achieve radiative regime, and, therefore, low density xenon plasmas are commonly used for the medium in which the radiative shocks propagate. The knowledge of the plasma radiative properties is crucial for the correct understanding and for the hydrodynamic simulations of radiative shocks. In this work, we perform an analysis of the radiative properties of xenon plasmas in a range of matter densities and electron temperatures typically found in laboratory experiments of radiative shocks launched in xenon plasmas. Furthermore, for a particular experiment, our analysis is applied to make a diagnostics of the electron temperatures of the radiative shocks since they could not be experimentally measured

Phylogenomic analysis of natural products biosynthetic gene clusters allows discovery of arseno-organic metabolites in model streptomycetes

We are indebted with Marnix Medema, Paul Straight and Sean Rovito, for useful discussions and critical reading of the manuscript, as well as with Alicia Chagolla and Yolanda Rodriguez of the MS Service of Unidad Irapuato, Cinvestav, and Araceli Fernandez for technical support in high-performance computing. This work was funded by Conacyt Mexico (grants No. 179290 and 177568) and FINNOVA Mexico (grant No. 214716) to FBG. PCM was funded by Conacyt scholarship (No. 28830) and a Cinvestav posdoctoral fellowship. JF and JFK acknowledge funding from the College of Physical Sciences, University of Aberdeen, UK.

Galectin-4 and Small Intestinal Brush Border Enzymes Form Clusters

Detergent-insoluble complexes prepared from pig small intestine are highly enriched in several transmembrane brush border enzymes including aminopeptidase N and sucrase-isomaltase, indicating that they reside in a glycolipid-rich environment in vivo. In the present work galectin-4, an animal lectin lacking a N-terminal signal peptide for membrane translocation, was discovered in these complexes as well, and in gradient centrifugation brush border enzymes and galectin-4 formed distinct soluble high molecular weight clusters. Immunoperoxidase cytochemistry and immunogold electron microscopy showed that galectin-4 is indeed an intestinal brush border protein; we also localized galectin-4 throughout the cell, mainly associated with membraneous structures, including small vesicles, and to the rootlets of microvillar actin filaments. This was confirmed by subcellular fractionation, showing about half the amount of galectin-4 to be in the microvillar fraction, the rest being associated with insoluble intracellular structures. A direct association between the lectin and aminopeptidase N was evidenced by a colocalization along microvilli in double immunogold labeling and by the ability of an antibody to galectin-4 to coimmunoprecipitate aminopeptidase N and sucrase-isomaltase. Furthermore, galectin-4 was released from microvillar, right-side-out vesicles as well as from mucosal explants by a brief wash with 100 mM lactose, confirming its extracellular localization. Galectin-4 is therefore secreted by a nonclassical pathway, and the brush border enzymes represent a novel class of natural ligands for a member of the galectin family. Newly synthesized galectin-4 is rapidly “trapped” by association with intracellular structures prior to its apical secretion, but once externalized, association with brush border enzymes prevents it from being released from the enterocyte into the intestinal lumen.