This Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement project will investigate the geographical organization of the Internet industry and unravel the driving forces underlying such patterns, within different regions and at different scales. The rapid diffusion of Internet and related digital technology is restructuring the landscape of economic activities and redefining the meaning of distance, location and scale, thus posing great challenges to theories of traditional economic geography. The purpose of this research is: (1) to determine the spatial distribution of China's Internet industry; (2) to examine how China's major Internet clusters were produced and are sustained, at the interface of contemporary globalization and localization processes; and (3) to demonstrate in what ways the business operations of China's Internet firms are shaped by China's transitional economic and institutional environment. The research utilizes a combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods, in a three stage research design: aggregate analysis and mapping of the spatial patterns of China's Internet industries; a survey of Internet firms to examine location choices, business networks and inter-organizational linkages; and in-depth interviews with business managers and state officials to reveal qualitative aspects of geographical decision-making and the role of the state.
The research findings will be significant in a number of ways. First, this project will make important contributions to our understanding of the emergence and growth of a rapidly growing economic sector in one of the most important global economies, China. Second, the research addresses theoretical questions of scale, geographically-based networks, local and non-local linkages, socio-institutional contexts, and the role of the state, contributing to economic geographical conceptualizations of uneven spatial development in the new information economy and its broader impacts on urban and regional development. Third, this research will create a large database of locational and attribute information for China's Internet firms, of use for future research and teaching. Finally, the empirical material generated from this research through a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches will be of interest not only to the academic geography community, but also to economists, government agencies and NGOs who are charting China's economic transformation and development of an information economy. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this award also will provide support to enable a promising student to establish a strong independent research career.
