From LA Times (Free registrastion required):
China’s advantages in the global marketplace are moving well beyond cheap equipment, material and labor. The country also exploits something called clustering in a way that the United States just can’t match.
Drawing on its vast population and mix of free-market and central-command economic policies, China has created giant industrial districts in distinctive entrepreneurial enclaves such as Datang. Each was built to specialize in making just one thing, including some of the most pedestrian of goods: cigarette lighters, badges, neckties, fasteners.
