Manufacturing diffusion trends from the perspective of trade network: the belt vs. the road

ABSTRACT With the deepening of the ‘Belt and Road (B&R)’ initiative (BRI), the trends of manufacturing relocation and diffusion along the B&R has accelerated. This paper first collects bilateral trade data of 16 categories of major commodities among 55 countries along the B&R for 2017. Second, according to current and future transportation accessibility, this paper constructs two types of topological networks among countries along the B&R from the perspectives of both competitive and complementary trade. Percolation theory is adopted to analyze the manufacturing diffusion trends and bottleneck links among the two types of topological trade networks, which provides a new perspective through which to study manufacturing relocation and diffusion patterns. The results show that (1) based on current transportation accessibility, main industries percolate and agglomerate among countries with rapid economic development along the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road and that (2) the improvement in the China-Europe Railway Express (CR Express) postpones diffusion trends and improves the relocation potential of Silk Road Economic Belt regions.