This paper adopts a “cultural political economy” (CPE) approach to examine the production of hegemony and related hegemonic struggles during the socio-spatial changes occurring in the Pearl River Delta. Drawing from the case of Hong Kong/Pearl River Delta, economic restructuring has given rise to the “hollowing out” debate. In face of this debate, two knowledge brands, the Harvard-Porter’s “competitive advantage” (1985) and MIT-Berger-Lester’s “industrial performance” models, have been stabilized as competing modes of developmentality (development governmentality) and have operated as paper-based economic panopticons to order/manage, at a distance, the organization of Hong Kong’s/Pearl River Delta’s space, policy, and, ultimately, the conduct of its population. These modes of developmentalities have met resistance from other forces in other spaces and with other interests, including from below. Nonetheless the two main power blocs are engaging in inter-bloc negotiations in the light of such resistance and are creating a hybrid strategy under the dominance of the service bloc.
Arvidsson, Adam.2005. Brands: Meaning and Value in Media Culture. London: Routledge.
Barnett, C.2005. The consolidations of “neoliberalism”, Geoforum 36 (1): 7–12.
Berger, Suzanne and Lester, Richard.1997. Made by Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press.
Bernstein, Basil.1990. The Structuring of Pedagogic Discourse: Class, Codes and Control. London: Routledge.
Ketel, Christian and Memedovic, Olga.2008. From clusters to cluster-based economic development. International Journal of Technological Learning, Innovation and Development 1 (3):375–92.
D’Andrea Tyson, Laura. 1988. Competitiveness: An analysis of the problem and a perspective of future policy. In: Martin Kenneth Starr (ed.). Global Competitiveness, Getting the U.S. Back on Track. New York: W.W. Norton, 95–120.
Dosi, Giovanni, and Soete, L.1988. Technical change and international trade. In: Giovanni Dosi (ed.). Technical Change and Economic Theory. London: Pinter, 401–431.
Ekers, M., and Loftus, A.2008. The power of water: Developing dialogues between Foucault and Gramsci. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 261: 698–718.
Enright, Michael, Scott, Edith and Dodwell, David. 1997. The Hong Kong Advantage. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press.
Enright, Michael, Scott, Edith and Chang, Kamun. 2005. Regional Powerhouse: The Greater Pearl River Delta and the Rise of China. London: John Wiley & Sons.
Fagerberg, Jan.1996. Technology and Competitiveness. Oxford Review of Economic Policy 12 (3): 39.
Fairclough, Norman.2006. Language and Globalization. London: Routledge.
Frauley, Jon.2007. The expulsion of Foucault from governmentality studies: Towards an archaeological-realist retrieval. In: Jon Frauley and Frank Pearce (eds). Critical Realism and the Social Sciences. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 258–272.
Foucault, Michel. 1998. Technologies of the self. In: L. Martin, H. Gutman and P. Hutton (eds). Technologies of the Self. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 14–49.
Freeman, Chris.1982. Economics of Industrial Innovation. London: Pinter.
Gereffi, Gary and Korzeniewicz, Miguel.1994. Commodity Chains and Global Capitalism. Westport, CT: Praeger.
Greater Pearl River Delta Business Council. 2006. Second Annual Report 2005–6.
[URL], last accessed on 14.6.07.
Hong Kong Arts Development Council. 2000. Introduction to Creative Industries: The Case of the United Kingdom and Implementation Strategies in Hong Kong.
[URL], last accessed 12.12.2006
Hong Kong Institute of Surveyors (
[URL]), last accessed on 14.9.06.
Hong Kong Trade Development Council. 2002. Creative Industries in Hong Kong.
[URL], last accessed 12.12.2006.
Hong Kong University Centre For Cultural Policy Research. 2003. Baseline Study on Hong Kong’s Creative Industries.
[URL], last accessed 14.9.06.
Jessop, Bob.2004. Critical semiotic analysis and cultural political economy. Critical Discourse Studies 1 (2): 159–174.
Jessop, Bob and Sum, Ngai-Ling. 2006. Beyond the Regulation Approach. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Krugman, Paul.1994. Competitiveness: A dangerous obsession. Foreign Policy March 73: 342–65. People’s Panel on West Kowloon (Source: [URL]), last accessed on 14th September 2006.
Lakoff, George and Johnson, Mark.1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2nd edition.
Marsden, Richard.1999. The Nature of Capital: Foucault After Marx. London: Routledge.
Martin, James. 1988. Gramsci’s Political Analysis: A Critical Introduction. Houndmills: Macmillan.
Martin, Ron and Sunley, Peter.2003. Deconstructing clusters: Chaotic concept or policy panacea?Journal of Economic Geography 31: 5–35.
Miettinen, Reijo.2002. National Innovation System: Scientific Concept or Political Rhetoric. Helsinki: Edita.
Mitchell, P.2003. Spatial metaphors as spatial techniques in the Work of Michel Foucault. In: Lorraina Pinnell (ed.). Interruptions: Essays in the Poetics/Politics of Space. Gazimagusa: Eastern Mediterranean University Press, 47–55.
Mumford, Lewis.1938. Culture of cities. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World.
OECD. 1962. Minutes of the 4th Session, Committee for Scientific Research, SR/M (62), Paris: OECD, p. 2.
OECD. 1991. Technology and Productivity: The Challenges for Economic Policy. Paris: OECD.
Perry, Martin. 2004. Business cluster promotion in New Zealand and the limits of exemplar clusters. Policy & Society 23 (4): 82–103.
Porter, Michael.1980. Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors. New York: Free Press.
Porter, Michael.1985. Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance. New York: Free Press.
Porter, Michael.1990. Competitive Advantage of Nations. Basingstoke: Macmillan.
Posner, M.1961. International trade and technical change. Oxford Economic Papers 13 (1): 323–41.
Schumpeter, J.1934. The Theory of Economic Development. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.
Sum, Ngai-Ling. (1999) Rethinking globalization: Rearticulating the spatial scales and temporal horizons of trans-border space. In: K. Oldset al.. (eds.). Globalization in the Asia Pacific. London: Routledge, 129–146.
Sum, Ngai-Ling. 2004. Towards a cultural political economy: Discourses, material power and (counter-)hegemony’. EU Framework 6 DEMOLOGOS project,
[URL], last accessed on 15th June 2007.
Sum, Ngai-Ling. 2006. Hong Kong/Pearl River Delta as a trans-border region: Structures, strategies and discourses. EU Framework 6 DEMOLOGOS project,
[URL], last accessed on 15th June 2007.
Sum, Ngai-Ling. 2008. Struggles against wal-martization and neo-liberal competitiveness in (southern) China: Is post-neoliberalism an alternative?. Development Dialogue 51: 67–81.
Sum, Ngai-Ling. and Jessop, Bob. 2010. Towards a Cultural Political Economy. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
The 2022 Foundation. 2003. Hong Kong and the Pearl River Delta: The Economic Interaction.
[URL], last accessed 11.06.07.
Vernon, Raymond.1966. International trade and international investment in the product cycle. Quarterly Journal of Economics 80 (2): 190–207.
Webb, D. West Kowloon.
[URL], last accessed on 11.6.07.
Yan, Yunxiang.1996. The flow of gifts: Reciprocity and social networks in a Chinese village. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Yang, Mayfair Mei-hui. 1994. Gift, Favours and Banquets: The Arts of Social Relationships in China. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Cited by (6)
Cited by six other publications
Sidhu, Ravinder K., Ho Kong Chong & Brenda S. A. Yeoh
2020. Assembling East Asian Knowledge Spaces. In Student Mobilities and International Education in Asia, ► pp. 31 ff.
Riep, Curtis B.
2019. Fixing contradictions of education commercialisation: Pearson plc and the construction of its efficacy brand. Critical Studies in Education 60:4 ► pp. 407 ff.
Lee, Seung-Ook
2017. Free trade agreements and “economic territory” as a geoeconomic imaginary in South Korea. Critical Asian Studies 49:4 ► pp. 569 ff.
Jessop, Bob
2016. Putting higher education in its place in (East Asian) political economy. Comparative Education 52:1 ► pp. 8 ff.
Julier, Guy
2016. Spatial Planning and Design Citizenship. In Human Smart Cities, ► pp. 101 ff.
Mulvad, Andreas
2015. Competing Hegemonic Projects within China's Variegated Capitalism: ‘Liberal’ Guangdong vs. ‘Statist’ Chongqing. New Political Economy 20:2 ► pp. 199 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 5 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.