Mixed-market and crisis mitigation: lessons from the performance of China's ICT industry before and after the 2008 crisis

Studies of global production networks have made great strides in understanding the dominant organizations of global production but so far have only offered limited insights on mitigating risks inherited by being a part of such networks under the condition of crises in the world's wealthiest regions. Drawing from the literature of regional resilience, this paper examines the performance of Chinese Information Communication Technology firms before and after the financial crisis of 2008 with the aim to identify differentiated impacts and the firms' and region's ability to deal with shocks under the crisis conditions. The research looks into how market portfolios and technological levels affect firm performance based on primary data from two large-scale firm-level surveys conducted before and after the 2008 financial crisis. I found that while the 2008 crisis primarily affected demands outside China, its impacts did not stop at firms or regions specializing in export. Domestic market-oriented firms also suffered from the shock, and mixed-market firms performed the best during the crisis. Technological levels did not have a clear impact on firm performance during the crisis. While the two surveys cover only a short time horizon, the comparison highlights the entrenched nature of the production networks and underscores the importance of creating and maintaining structural diversity and multiple market relations to survive the new normal of the volatile globalized industry.