Market ties remain an anchor for global political dynamics. Can these ties moderate polarization, securitization, and better bridge authoritarian and liberal economies? Global value chains integrate the know-how of lead firms and suppliers of key components along stages of production and in multiple offshore locations. Pandemics and divisive politics have contributed to the instability of the GVC-based international economy. Yet GVC-sensitive policies continue to serve as a critical catalyst for socio-economic development in the Asian region.
Gereffi and colleagues have raised the question of how the shift from a prosperity-driven to a security-driven development landscape will affect change in GVCs. While reshoring and national industrial policy for Indigenous development have gained ground, growing calls for supply chain resilience provide a counter-narrative for sustaining cross-border networks.
We address policy-relevant issues with a theoretically informed and empirically robust approach. New modes of GVC engagement, coupled with theories of the neo-developmental state provide theoretical direction. Bringing case to concept, we move beyond the dichotomy of resilience and reshoring to restructuring alternatives that advance the conceptual utility of the GVC and more generally of the capitalist model. Perhaps most significant is our effort to address critical questions of upgrading for development.
As scholars and practioners, can we begin to model new forms of GVC ties? Asian firms and states offer a profile of global GVC transition as they nurture production nodes, particularly in the China-U.S. market competition. Digitalization has been a critical factor in emerging priorities for state policy and firm strategy. States are re-designing development policies to anchor and support supply chains. Firms are restructuring and rearranging supply networks to reduce risk and avoid political constraints. These emerging patterns of market ties provide our subject. We are especially interested in how new regional channels support restructuring among and between nations of Northeast and Southeast Asia. The evolution of corporate market ties in Asia provides one critical profile of global capitalism in transition and contributes to the conceptual effort to better understand new modes of upgrading and cross-border ties within GVCs