How Can China Achieve Economic Transition with the Featured Town Concept? A Case Study of Hangzhou from an Evolutionary Perspective

Abstract

The Chinese government wants to promote economic transition towards innovative and high technology-added economy. For that purpose and amongst others, the government has launched the Featured Town concept. Although this concept already received many responses in practice, it is hardly clear what is exactly meant by it. Moreover, it is mostly conceived as a regular top-down policy measure. However, in this paper we will argue that the concept would only get its meaning when it would be enhanced by participation of the business and civic society. We will use the ideas of relational and (co)evolutionary economic geography to identify the role of the Featured Town in economic transition. Particularly we will explain how a leading firm, Alibaba, coevolves with the province of Zhejiang and the city Hangzhou to induce the Featured Town concept in an efficient and innovative way. We will conclude that instead of a concept, Featured Town is in fact a complex adaptive system (CAS), where firms, agents and institutes co-evolve with each other, revitalizing the urban geography, as that it is remoulded by the geography itself.

How playfulness climate promotes the performance of millennial employees – the mediating role of change self-efficacy

“…Google, for instance, is dedicated to fostering a “free and comfortable work environment”. Alibaba has adopted the name “Dharma Institute” from Jin Yong's novels to convey the spirit of dedication to its employees and to encourage them to practice the “height of perfection” (Gong et al ., 2020). The role effects of playfulness are controversial, so more research is needed to determine the mechanisms and prevalence of playfulness in the workplace while also examining the positive effects of playfulness in organizations.…”