• Ref. No.: BARDA-48854
• Grant: £ 75000
• Principal Investigator and Grant Holder: Ngai-Ling Sum
• Co-Investigator: Bob Jessop

Synopsis

The research on Cultures of Competitiveness in India and China had three dimensions. First, it developed a cultural political economy approach to changing cultures of competitiveness in terms of discourses (e.g., ‘economic imaginaries’) and policy practices. Second, case studies of Hong Kong/Pearl River Delta and India illustrated how competitiveness ideas are being reinterpreted and combined at different sites and scales. In the former case, a global city region is being re-integrated with the ‘motherland’ in a context of ‘catch-up competitiveness’. India is still developing its national competitiveness strategy but has major local experiments oriented to poverty-reduction around building competitive micro-clusters. A major policy implication of the case studies is the importance of a multi-scalar approach that would enable researchers and policy-makers to identify the best scale(s) to ‘get competitiveness right’. Third, this research examined the rise of ‘BRIC’ (Brazil, Russia, India and China) discourse as a new competitiveness imaginary, especially as this concerns China and India.

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