The Restructuring of Hong Kong Industries and the Urbanization of Zhujinag Delta 1979-1989

This book proposes a framework to analyse industrial restructuring. It explains industrial restructuring as a defensive counteraction to structural contradictions in production which leads to a deepening of the division of labour through four mechanisms: intensification, rationalization, technological change, and transplantation.

Hong Kong manufacturing industries have directly benefited from territorial reforms in China, and the transplant of land and labour intensive processes indicates the magnitude of the regional integration and reliance of production. By describing, mapping and analysing the territorial corollary of the reforms, the Zhujiang Delta extended metropolitan region is circumscribed. This indicates some characteristics of spatial integration and economic diversification in the sphere of production and exchange between Hong Kong and Zhujiang Delta. If the restructuring process in Hong Kong ultimately intensified as a reaction to the modernization drive in China, which now supports economic divpse of the divide between foreign trade and manufacturing production in Hong Kong indicates it increasingly specializes in trading production coordination in China.