Abstract The authors analyses the spatial characteristics of manufacturing industries in Guangdong province. As a province located close to Hong Kong, Guangdong has attracted a great amount of FDI, which contributed a lot to the development of manufacturing industries. There exist many specialized towns that account for a large part of manufacturing industries in Guangdong. Most manufacturing industries agglomerate are located in Pearl River Delta, including Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Dongguan, Foshan and Zhongshan. The authors calculate Gini index of both 2-dig and 3-dig manufacturing and the results show that many industries are quite agglomerated. The most agglomerated industries are those requiring special inputs, with high entry level or more regulated, like tobacco and petroleum industries. According to global Moran's I index, many manufacturing industries are significantly spatial auto correlated at both county-level cities as well as prefectural level cities in Guangdong. The investigation of communications equipment industry, electronic computer industry, and household electrical appliance industry shows that the highly agglomerated and spatially auto correlated industries are usually more competitive than other industries. Globalization, endowments, scale economy, industrial relationship, technology spillover, local protection and transportation cost are the main factors that may influence the agglomeration of industries. The empirical study shows industries that are highly relied on resource and energy input are more agglomerated. The statistical results show that globalization factors are important for industrial agglomeration. Exporting promotes industrial agglomeration significantly, while foreign direct investment has no positive correlation with agglomeration, which indicates that FDI in Guangdong has spread out to inner cities. The transportation cost has a negative impact on industrial agglomeration. The local protection factors have no significant relationship with industrial agglomeration, which is consistent with the reality of Guangdong province. Since the labor-intensive industries and manufacturing part of global value chain still account for a large part of Guangdong's manufacturing industries, technology spillover factors have little to do with industrial agglomeration.
2011, Vol. 26 
