Abstract:

In the era of China's New Normal, compared with other regions in China, the Northeast region has been in obvious economic downturn featured by its weak adaption, or in other words, weak regional economic resilience. However, there is a lack of study on how middle or micro economic sectors, particularly industries and enterprises could shape the resilience level of regional macro economy. This paper, therefore, tries to fill this gap by analyzing the multi-level characteristics of Shenyang's economic resilience since 1978, with regard to its economic growth, industrial restructuring, and enterprise spatial dynamics. We found that affected by China's development status, resilience level of Shenyang's economy shows a weak-strong-weak cycle, driven by the fluctuation of its secondary industry. There are obvious differences in the resilience level of old and new paths in Shenyang. In particular, due to its low competitiveness, the resilience level of mechanical industry in old paths has weakened and imposed greater impacts on secondary industry. Meanwhile, the survival rate of old and new enterprises indicates that the resilience level of old paths enterprises is stronger than that of the new paths ones under the context of national economy slowing down; except for enterprises in food industry, the resilience level of old enterprises is stronger than that of the new ones. Moreover, this research indicates that new enterprises of technology-intensive industry such as the old paths and the electronic industry in new paths show a spatial path dependence of city center, and spatial agglomeration has positive effects on enterprises' survival.

Key words: regional economic resilience, industrial structure, enterprise dynamics, spatial distribution, old industrial cities