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City Branding in China’s Northeastern Region: How Do Cities Reposition Themselves When Facing Industrial Decline and Ecological Modernization?

Author

Listed:
  • Meiling Han

    (School of Management, Management Science and Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, China
    Erasmus School of Law, Erasmus University Rotterdam, 3062 PA Rotterdam, The Netherlands)

  • Martin De Jong

    (Faculty of Technology, Policy & Management, Delft University of Technology, 2628 CD Delft, The Netherlands
    School of International Relations and Public Affairs, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China
    Erasmus School of Law, Erasmus University Rotterdam, 3062 PA Rotterdam, The Netherlands)

  • Zhuqing Cui

    (School of Management, Management Science and Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, China)

  • Limin Xu

    (School of Management, Management Science and Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, China)

  • Haiyan Lu

    (Faculty of Technology, Policy & Management, Delft University of Technology, 2628 CD Delft, The Netherlands)

  • Baiqing Sun

    (School of Management, Management Science and Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, China)

Abstract

The past decade has seen a surge in the use of city branding, which is used to attract specific target groups of investors, high-tech green firms and talented workforce and reflects a desired shift from old, polluting manufacturing industries to new, clean service industries. Previous studies in the Chinese mega-city regions Pearl River Delta, Yangtze River Delta and Jing-Jin-Ji (region around Beijing and Tianjin) have shown that branding practices of primarily service and innovation oriented cities are largely in line with existing industrial profiles while those which are predominantly manufacturing oriented wish to present themselves as more service and innovation driven. In this contribution, city branding practices are studied in China’s three Northeastern provinces Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning which face structural decline because of the presence of many outdated resource-based and heavy industries. The gap between existing profile and branding choices appears not systematic as in China’s leading economic regions. Northeastern cities focus more on combining primary, secondary and tertiary industrial patterns than on displacing manufacturing with services. The tertiary sector in these provinces is more administrative and public sector oriented and generates lower value added; it is therefore not significantly more attractive than the primary and secondary ones.

Suggested Citation

  • Meiling Han & Martin De Jong & Zhuqing Cui & Limin Xu & Haiyan Lu & Baiqing Sun, 2018. "City Branding in China’s Northeastern Region: How Do Cities Reposition Themselves When Facing Industrial Decline and Ecological Modernization?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(1), pages 1-25, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:10:y:2018:i:1:p:102-:d:125457
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

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    2. Lu, Haiyan & Zhao, Pengjun & Hu, Haoyu & Zeng, Liangen & Wu, Kai Sheng & Lv, Di, 2022. "Transport infrastructure and urban-rural income disparity: A municipal-level analysis in China," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 99(C).
    3. Hanna Górska-Warsewicz, 2020. "Factors Determining City Brand Equity—A Systematic Literature Review," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(19), pages 1-35, September.
    4. Yun Song & Dominic Stead & Martin de Jong, 2020. "New Town Development and Sustainable Transition under Urban Entrepreneurialism in China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(12), pages 1-20, June.
    5. Meiling Han & Martin de Jong & Minghui Jiang, 2019. "City Branding and Industrial Transformation from Manufacturing to Services: Which Pathways do Cities in Central China Follow?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(21), pages 1-46, October.
    6. Nelson de Matos & Marisol B. Correia & José Ramón Saura & Ana Reyes-Menendez & Nuno Baptista, 2020. "Marketing in the Public Sector—Benefits and Barriers: A Bibliometric Study from 1931 to 2020," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 9(10), pages 1-22, September.
    7. Chenyu Zheng, 2020. "Comparisons of the City Brand Influence of Global Cities: Word-Embedding Based Semantic Mining and Clustering Analysis on the Big Data of GDELT Global News Knowledge Graph," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(16), pages 1-18, August.
    8. Wenting Ma & Daan Schraven & Mark de Bruijne & Martin de Jong & Haiyan Lu, 2019. "Tracing the Origins of Place Branding Research: A Bibliometric Study of Concepts in Use (1980–2018)," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(11), pages 1-20, May.
    9. Jian Xu & Yongrong Cao, 2019. "The image of Beijing in Europe: findings from The Times, Le Figaro, Der Spiegel from 2000 to 2015," Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 15(3), pages 185-197, September.
    10. Tianyi Zeng & Hong Jin & Zhifei Geng & Zihang Kang & Zichen Zhang, 2022. "Urban–Rural Fringe Long-Term Sequence Monitoring Based on a Comparative Study on DMSP-OLS and NPP-VIIRS Nighttime Light Data: A Case Study of Shenyang, China," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(18), pages 1-18, September.
    11. Negar Noori & Martin De Jong, 2018. "Towards Credible City Branding Practices: How Do Iran’s Largest Cities Face Ecological Modernization?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(5), pages 1-16, April.

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