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The purpose of this paper is to explain the reasons and development trend of the new round of restructuring of regional division of labor in East Asia after the global financial crisis and the role of China in the process.

The paper probes into four factors leading to the adjustment of regional division of labor in East Asia before analyzing its development trend trough comparing the change of roles of China and ASEAN in the process.

After the flying-geese division and regional production network, East Asia’s regional division of labor is getting a new round of structural adjustment. The analysis of this paper shows that this adjustment is mainly due to global financial crisis, post-crisis de-globalization, the rebalancing of East Asian economies and China’s economic transformation. From the adjustment direction, the main trend is ASEAN gradually replacing China to become the new assembly plant area, while China becomes a new manufacturing power by its rising status in the global value chain.

The paper describes the development trend of the new round of restructuring of regional division of labor in East Asia in the future and gives the policy implications for the East Asian countries.

To realise the shared development of the digital economy, people need to transcend the capital logic and advocate the logic of cooperative development, i.e. “co-construction, benefit-sharing and co-governance”. This study aims to discuss the aforementioned statement.

Platform economy is a new economic form produced by the transformation of the social production patterns in the era of digital capitalism. In the neo-imperialist stage, a new stage of capitalist development, capital logic promotes the global expansion of the platform economy and influences its development process, organisational form, contradictions and dilemmas and internal transcendence. Having the spatiotemporal chain of capital circulation repaired, the globalisation of the platform economy is reshaping how the means of production are combined with labour, affecting the local changes in the general relations of production and “international relations of production”.

In the accumulation of digital capitalism, the social contradictions and fundamental contradictions in the capitalist world have been further intensified, making exploitation, income distribution gap, monopoly and other problems increasingly severe. The imbalance and inequality in the global development of the digital economy are increasingly prominent.

Regarding the global governance of the digital economy, China, as a major responsible country, will strive to encourage all countries to co-build a community with a shared future in cyberspace. In the new international development pattern of digital economy globalisation, China must take effective measures to actively safeguard its national security and development interests to meet specific challenges.

In recent decades, capitalist globalization has entailed a new international division of labor with the relocation of some stages of manufacturing production from the Center to the Periphery through the Global value chains (GVCs). This new pattern of global production is marked by wide income disparities between the different regions of the world economy, accentuated by value transfers hidden within both traditional and GVCs international trade. The chapter presents a theoretical model based on a Marxian approach for the accounting of unequal exchange in international trade in value-added, resulting from the decoupling of value-produced and value-captured inside and outside GVCs. The empirical results show the ongoing relevance of unequal exchange in contemporary capitalism as one of the fundamental causes of disparities in income and economic development among the countries of the global economy.

This essay demonstrates that US economist Charles Post’s attempted rebuttal of the ‘labour aristocracy’ thesis is both theoretically and empirically flawed. Defending the proposition that colonialism, capital export imperialism and the formation of oligopolies with global reach have, over the past century and more, worked to sustain the living standards of a privileged upper stratum of the international working class, it rejects Post’s assertion that the existence of such cannot be proven. The essay concludes with a working definition of this ‘labour aristocracy’, setting the concept within the field of global political economy and reclaiming its relevance to the Marxist tradition.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the special issue by problematising labour agency, precariousness, and labour fragmentation as defining themes of the interplay between employment relations, migration and mobility.

Drawing from discussions about the impact of globalisation on changes in features of work and employment, and bringing together theory and research on employment relations and labour migration, the paper discusses the relational spatial and temporal nature of agency, the diverse features of worker experiences of precariousness, and the resulting fragmentation in labour solidarity.

Labour agency, precariousness and labour fragmentation intersect to create the axis of dynamics of hardship and abuse that dominate work experiences of migrant workers in the global labour market. Globalisation has a pervasive impact in articulating and perpetuating systemic processes of closure, entrapment and containment, which are triggered by migration and legitimised by dynamics of employment relations.

The paper contributes to current discussions about the interplay between migration, mobility and employment relations and sets out future directions of research to enhance our understanding of the role of employment relations to perpetuate, legitimise and normalise dynamics of globalisation that promote the migrant division of labour and create contradictory labour demands and displacements in the global labour market.

The integration of the digital economy and the real economy has been a key focus in promoting digital economic development. It denotes a comprehensive digital transformation of national economic activities regarding technological infrastructure and production modes, which is crucial for establishing a modern economic system, advancing industrial infrastructure and modernizing industrial chains.

Firstly, the study delves into the internal logic behind the emergence of the new development dynamic resulting from digital technology's evolution. Secondly, it explores the mechanism of mutual promotion and support between the new development dynamic and the digital economy based on China's shift in focus from international engagement to the domestic economy during different stages of industrialization. Subsequently, it analyzes the characteristics and critical factors of digital economy development and examines the macro-, meso- and micro-level constraints on these factors. Finally, the paper explores approaches to promoting digital economy development while constructing the new development dynamic and provides relevant policy suggestions.

The construction of the new development dynamic and the development of the digital economy are inextricably linked, and only by mutually reinforcing each other can they provide an inexhaustible impetus for China's high-quality economic development.

The new development dynamic and the digital economy development form an indivisible whole. The new development dynamic creates the necessary conditions for digital economy development and promotes the formation of digital production modes. In turn, the development of the digital economy should strive to improve the mainstay position of the domestic economy, enhance the synergy between the domestic economy and international engagement, upgrade value chains while improving the supply and the industrial chains in China and ensure a parallel increase in labor income alongside improved productivity.

The article builds upon recent developments in feminist theories as they were adopted in organization studies to review the state of research into women in MNCs and to offer new directions for the study of MNCs as “gendering organizations,” both as they are shaped by gender relations and are active agents in constructing gender categories, division of labor, images, and inequalities. Juxtaposing insights from gender studies and International Business and Management, the article offers a new agenda for the studies of corporate internationalization and its social consequences.

Despite growing interest in clusters role for the global competitiveness of firms, there has been little research into how globalization affects cluster‐based firms' (CBFs) use of local knowledge resources and the combination of local and global knowledge used. Using the cluster's knowledge base as a mediating variable, the purpose of this paper is to examine how globalization affected the studied firms' use of local cluster‐based knowledge, integration of local and global knowledge, and networking capabilities.

Qualitative case studies of nine firms in three clusters strongly affected by increasing global division of labour.

The paper suggests that globalization has affected how firms use local resources and combine local and global knowledge. Unexpectedly, clustered firms with explicit procedures and established global fora for exchanging knowledge were highly active in local knowledge use, whereas CBFs characterized by a more implicit knowledge base did not use localized knowledge.

The study is exploratory and covers three clusters in one small and open developed economy. Further corroboration through replicated studies and possibly triangulation with quantitative studies would further develop the understanding on how globalization impacts on the internal organization of CBFs.

For policy makers, cluster policies should be reconsidered if the role of clusters differs from what has been expected so far. From being self‐contained systems which only links to the outside world in the extremities of the local value chain, cluster activities now unfolds in complex production networks around the world, entailing the development and/or integration of clusters in both developing and developed countries.

Several studies have examined the changing role of clusters in the evolving global division of labour. However, research is lacking that addresses the challenges of transformation from the level of the CBF and how these may be affected by cluster evolution. The paper takes a micro‐oriented perspective and focus on clusters in Denmark, a small and mature economy.

While technologies are often packaged as solutions to long-standing social ills, scholars of digital economies have raised the alarm that, far from liberatory, technologies often further entrench social inequities and in fact automate structures of oppression. This literature has been revelatory but tends to replicate a methodological nationalism that erases global racial hierarchies. We argue that digital economies rely on colonial pathways and in turn serve to replicate a racialized and neocolonial world order. To make this case, we draw on W.E.B. Du Bois' writings on capitalism's historical development through colonization and the global color line. Drawing specifically on The World and Africa as a global historical framework of racism, we develop heuristics that make visible how colonial logics operated historically and continue to this day, thus embedding digital economies in this longer history of capitalism, colonialism, and racism. Applying a Du Boisian framework to the production and propagation of digital technologies shows how the development of such technology not only relies on preexisting racial colonial production pathways and the denial of racially and colonially rooted exploitation but also replicates these global structures further.