Measuring the industry relocation at the macro-level

The paper introduces a new method for quantifying the magnitude of industry relocation at the macro-level, mitigating the limitations in existing measures and providing a clearer depiction of production location dynamics. We employ this novel approach to measure global and China's domestic industry relocation. The findings reveal that during 2002–2007, production activities displayed a dual trend of dispersion globally alongside an agglomeration within China. However, during the periods 2007–2012 and 2012–2017, following the outbreak of the global financial crisis in 2008, the global dispersion pattern attenuated, while China's domestic industry relocation transitioned from a slight agglomeration to a more dispersed pattern.