关键词: 空间分布, 信息化, 虚拟企业, 中国

Abstract: It is now widely recognized that new information and communication technologies (ICTs) are getting more and more important for firms to achieve competitiveness in the era of internet. Indeed, ICTs have been helping firms to evolve towards new models for the organization of production, such as lean production, agile manufacturing and virtual enterpsies (VEs). Among these new models, VE is considered as one of the most promising model, while it can meet the demands for quick response to changing technological innovations, production specifications, globalizing markets and customized orientation. In particular, VE is a network of organizationally independent and geographically distributed companies that cooperate to address business opportunities, in which member enterprises share information, costs and skills. In China, the development of VEs in the last several years has been incredibly fast. It is against such a background that this paper investigates the development of VEs in China with special attention to its geographical features and then analyzes the factors behind the spatial distribution of VEs, through a case study of 317 Chinese virtual enterprises. The results indicate that VEs development in China in the last several years shows very clear features of spatial concentration in major cities and developed regions, including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Fujian and Jilin. And the results of a multiple regression model suggest that ICTs are clearly important in deciding the provincial distribution of VEs in China, while the influence of internet and population quality is also significant.

Key words: China, information and communication technologies(ICTs), spatial feature, virtual enterprises(VEs)