‘Partly’ globalized networks and driving mechanism in resource-based state-owned enterprises: A case study of J Group

Abstract

In the context of economic globalization, while multinational enterprises from developed countries occupy a high-end position in the global value chain, enterprises from developing countries are often marginalized in the world market. In China, resource-based state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are tasked with the mission of safeguarding resource security, and their internationalization development ideas and strategic deployment are significantly and fundamentally different from those of other non-state-owned enterprises and large multinational corporations. This study provides ideas for the globalization policies of enterprises in developing countries. We consider J Group in western China as a case and discuss its productive investment and global production network development from 2010 to 2019. We found that J Group was ‘partly’ globalized, and there are multiple core nodes with the characteristics of centralized and decentralized coexistence in the production network; in addition, the overall layout centre shifted to Southeast Asia and China; however, its global production was restricted by the enterprise’s investment security considerations, support and restrictions of the home country, political security risk of the host country, and sanctions from the West. These findings provide insights for future research: under the wave of anti-globalization and ‘internal circulation as the main body’, resource SOEs should consider the potential risk of investment, especially keeping the middle and downstream industrial chain in China as much as possible.

Keywords

Global production networks / Global value chain / Productive investment / Resource SOEs / J Group / ‘Partly’ globalized

Declaration of Competing Interests

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grants No. 41971198 and 42371198) and Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Grant No. lzujbky-2023-it24).

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