Understanding the geographical process of the decline in manufacturing employment in China between 2000 and 2020

Abstract

The decline in manufacturing employment has emerged as a global demographic phenomenon in recent decades. However, previous research has primarily focused on the national level, resulting in limited geographical insights into the spatial variations of this decline at more minor scales. Our paper decodes the long-term geographical process of manufacturing employment decline at the city level in China from an “industry-population-place” perspective, underscoring the pivotal role played by technological advancements. The results show that, during 2000–2010 and 2010–2020, the unbalanced changing pattern of China's manufacturing employment appeared to be a disruptive reallocation. The technology-driven transition of manufacturing employment decline at the city level in China was identified. During 2000–2010, over 60% of cities experiencing a decline in manufacturing employment were technologically lost, while technological density improvement became the “main melody” in most cities experiencing such decline during 2010–2020. In a city experiencing such a decline, the greater the improvement in technological intensity, the stronger the positive effect of the decline on local economic development, particularly when accompanied by an expansion in the socioeconomic scale of the city. Furthermore, we observe changes in the characteristics of manufacturing employment on the west side of the Hu Line between 2010 and 2020, compared to previous years and even decades. These changes are characterised by a significant increase in manufacturing employment and the rapid technology-driven transformation of cities that have experienced a decline in manufacturing employment.