This paper explores how regional development is influenced by global production networks via the process of strategic coupling. It theorises the role of strategic coupling in shaping regional development, with a specific focus on the development of regional innovation systems and regional economic resilience. Building on this theoretical framework, quantitative-based regression methods are applied to measure the effectiveness of this mechanism through the case of the Guangdong Province in Southern China. Findings highlight dual effects in an Asian context that: regions with high bargaining power and autonomous coupling with global production networks (GPNs) may initially reduce the resilience, but they significantly boost the innovation system that would foster long-term resilience. Conversely, low bargaining power regions with less autonomous coupling experience short-term resilience gains but suffer from suppressed the innovation system, ultimately weakening long-term resilience. This study contributes by integrating relational economic geography’s (REG’s) strategic coupling with evolutionary economic geography’s (EEG’s) regional evolution framework, enhancing theoretical insights, and innovating methods to quantify strategic coupling and its regional impacts. It echoes the call of theorising back by developing new theories based on remaking Asian economies.
Ji et al. (Mon,) studied this question.
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