Obviously, labour cost is not a single factor and actor in determining cross-border relocation of labour-intensive manufacturing.
This paper attempts to contribute to the literature through investigating cross-border relocation of labour-intensive TNCs from China to Southeast Asia since 2000.
The interaction between cross-border relocation of labour-intensive manufacturing firms from coastal Chin to Southeast Asian countries and technological upgrading in China warrants comprehensive investigation.
Since 2000, especially in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis, there has witnessed the spatial relocation of labour-intensive manufacturing firms from the coastal China to Southeast Asia.
Since 2000, these export-led regions have encountered unprecedented challenges, especially the rising cost of labour, land, shortage of labour, policy changes, and shrinking market demand of western advanced economies, which have engendered spatial relocation of labour-intensive manufacturing firms from China to lower-cost locations, e.g. inland China and neighbouring Southeast Asia.
Since 2000, these export-led regions have encountered unprecedented challenges, particularly the rising cost of labour, which have engendered spatial relocation of labour-intensive manufacturing firms from coastal China to lower-cost locations such as inland China and neighbouring Southeast Asian countries.
Blair's attempts to sustain his "third way" politics have never been persuasive as more than a shrewd relocation of New Labour politics in what the pollsters tell him is the current centre ground.
At the above conceptual and empirical backdrops, this study develops a multi-scalar framework (Fig. 2) to examine the ongoing cross-border relocation of TNCs, particularly labour-intensive firms in garment and electronics industry from the PRD in coastal China to selected Southeast Asian countries, e.g. Indonesia, Vietnam and Cambodia.
It is worthwhile for noting that apart from Southeast Asian countries, Africa has turned to be alternative locations for the relocation and expansion of labour-intensive manufacturing from China in recent years (Hong and Hong 2006).
The worst human rights abuses, rape, forced relocation of ethnic minorities and forced labour still continue at a widespread and systematic level.
Observers say the case is crucial because of the senior position held by the four defendants in the regime which seized power between 1975 and 1979 and set up a programme of enforced rural relocation and labour camps.
