Development of the sports industry in the conditions of geo-economic challenges

Abstract

The core of the geo-economy is the industry. Therefore, the geo-economic competition of countries in the world today mainly revolves around industries. Nowadays, the China's sports industry is facing difficulties such as the low degree of modernization of the industrial system, the slow evolution of the rationalization of the industrial structure, the unreasonable external structure of the sports industry, and the serious dependence on the path of industrial development. Therefore, for the high-quality development of the leading sports industry, the Chinese government has begun to pay attention to the transformation and upgrading of the industrial structure in recent years. However, with the gradual imbalance of wealth distribution, international trade, resource endowment, and consumption. The competition in the fields of finance, science, and technology between the world's major geo-economic plates is intensifying day by day, and the opposition between "winners" and "losers" is becoming more and more serious. Under such circumstances, the modernization of China's sports industry structure and the continuous growth of industrial competitiveness will inevitably affect and erode the global monopoly profits of high-performance developed countries. At the same time, China's sports industry will inevitably face various geo-economic challenges through trade, investment, technology financing and even economic sanctions from conservative countries. It should be pointed out that under the background of the increasingly fierce geo-economic competition, market competition theory cannot effectively guide the international competition under the global industrial redistribution. When the free-market mechanism is increasingly unable to meet the needs of the development of the sports industry, the upgrading of China's sports industry under the global value chain needs to rely on the national mobilization system from the perspective of the geo-economy. At the same time, from the perspective of the geo-economy the core goal of the sports industry is to safeguard the interests of national economic, political, and cultural security, and to implement the will of the country. With the support of China's geo-economic strategy and industrial policy, it will help the Chinese sports industry to cope with the fierce geo-economic competition and challenges. In particular, compared with western developed countries, the current development of China's sports industry is still in the primary stage. Due to the market of the sports industry being imperfect, it may go through a long process to completely rely on the adjustment of market mechanism to select the dominant sports industry. In addition, under the background of geo-economics, the transnational economic cooperation of China's sports industry in the international market faces a more complex geo-environment. Therefore, it is impossible for China's sports industry to implement the overall development strategy of "Grand Promotion". Priority should be given to the development of "key industries" with geo-economic advantages and more international competitiveness, to have a strong driving force and guidance for China's sports industry and even economic and social development. From the perspective of geo-economic strategy, the core value of sports industry development lies in serving the national geo-strategy. In other words, the sports industry category from the perspective of geo-economics must not only reflect the needs of the development of China's sports industry, but also have strategic value, which can comprehensively safeguard national interests and feed back the implementation of China's geo-economic strategy. According to the purpose and content of this study, in terms of the international competitiveness of different sports industries from the perspective of geo-economy, this paper believes that the industries connected with the geo-economy include the sports competition and performance industry, sports fitness and leisure industry, sports goods manufacturing industry, sports infrastructure construction, and sports tourism. Therefore, the choice of advantageous sports industry should be selected from these five industries according to the international competitiveness of China's sports industry from the perspective of geo-economics. According to the "Porter-Dunning" diamond model theory, first-level indicators of the international competitiveness evaluation index system of China's sports industry from the perspective of geo-economics select factor conditions; demand conditions; firm strategy, structure and rivalry; related supporting industries; transnational economic activities; government role; and opportunities. According to the design principles of the Delphi method, the data of the screening indicators are obtained through the evaluation of the importance of the secondary indicators by experts. According to the importance mean, standard deviation and coefficient of variation of the indicators, an evaluation index system is obtained consisting of seven first-level indicators and 26 second-level indicators. Based on the evaluation index system of China's sports industry's international competitiveness from the perspective of geo-economics, this paper uses AHP group decision-making method to process the decision-making information of each element of the criterion layer and the index layer by experts, and obtain the final group decision-making conclusion. The results show that the first place of seven element in the first-level indicators is “firm strategy, structure and rivalry” with the weight index of 0.3242. The following order is, transnational economic activities, demand conditions, factor conditions, government, opportunities, and related supporting industries. In terms of secondary indicators, the top-ranked indicators are: international trade, industrial scale，industrial innovation capability，international market demand，multinational company，industrial efficiency，domestic market demand，industrial policy，and so on. The comprehensive evaluation of the international competitiveness of China's sports industry from the perspective of geo-economics using fuzzy mathematics will be closer to the actual situation. on the basis of the known index system of China's sports industry and the comprehensive weight of each index from the perspective of geo-economics, this paper adopts the method of fuzzy mathematics to comprehensively evaluate the international competitiveness of each industry in China's sports industry. Finally, the final ranking of the international competitiveness of China's sports industry from the perspective of geo-economics is: sporting goods manufacturing > sports tourism > sports competition and performance industry > sports fitness and leisure industry > sports construction industry. The results of the fuzzy comprehensive evaluation show that the total score of the international competitiveness of the sporting goods manufacturing industry is 7.4786, which is higher than the evaluation results of the international competitiveness of the other four industries. Facing the dual pressure of the capital- and technology-intensive sporting goods manufacturing industry in established powers and the chasing effect of labor-intensive sporting goods manufacturing industries in emerging economies, China's sporting goods manufacturing industry must continue to climb the high-end of the international industrial chain and occupy the industry commanding heights to get rid of the risk of industrial hollowing out. However, this process deeply undermines the global monopoly profits of high-productivity conservative states. Especially when factors such as the new industrial revolution, the "rise" of trade protectionism and the global pandemic of COVID-19 are intertwined, various forms of geoeconomic challenges, which include trade, investment, market, technology, finance, and even economic sanctions faced by China's sporting goods manufacturing industry, have erupted intensively. In view of the current macro-geo-economic pattern and various geo-economic challenges faced by China's sporting goods manufacturing industry, this paper proposes a specific paths for the development of China's sporting goods manufacturing industry from the perspective of geo-economics. Specifically, it mainly includes: actively integrating into the geo-economic strategy, striving for the right to speak in the formulation of standards, and seizing the commanding heights of economic development; continuing to promote trade liberalization and facilitation cooperation; increasing investment in high-end innovation in the sports goods manufacturing industry; Brand building; financial innovation. Furthermore, based on the geo-economic theory and the current practice of China's geo-economic strategy represented by the "One Belt, One Road" initiative, this paper innovatively proposes the strategic concept of upgrading the sporting goods manufacturing industry to a geo-industry, that is, the geo-sporting goods manufacturing industry. The proposal of this strategic concept can make up for the limitations of its traditional sports goods manufacturing transnational economic cooperation in the pursuit of geographical interests, such as insufficient attention to political interests and geo-economic security. In addition, the proposal of the geo-sporting goods manufacturing industry has enriched the content system of geo-economics, helped the country formulate a scientific geo-strategy, and expanded the scope of geo-economic activities. To sum up, this paper believes that the root cause of the current geo-economic conflict lies in the improvement of the competitiveness of China's emerging industries, including the sports industry. As the core part of the geo-economy, industry has inevitably become the core focus of the geo-economic competition between China and the conservative countries. As the most competitive industry in China's sports industry from the perspective of geo-economics, the sporting goods manufacturing industry is also an important manifestation of China's sports strength and even comprehensive national strength. In the short term, in order to safeguard its own interests, the industrial upgrading of China's sporting goods manufacturing industry will inevitably be challenged by geo-economic challenges such as trade wars, technological blockades and economic sanctions from established powers. However, Moody's, one of the world's top three rating agencies, believed that "Made in China 2025" will not be affected by the Sino-US trade war. In the long run, China's sporting goods manufacturing industry has super-large market advantages and domestic demand potential, the world's most complete manufacturing industry system advantages, and the support of China's sports industry policy advantages. In addition, the practice of China's "Belt and Road" initiative, RECP and other geo-economic strategies has provided a solid guarantee for China's sporting goods manufacturing industry to promote the position of the international value chain from the middle link to the two ends, and truly achieve leapfrog development. Most importantly, from the perspective of geo-economics, this paper argues that the level and modernization of the sporting goods manufacturing industry determine the level and modernization of China's entire sports industry. The "growth pole" effect of the sports goods manufacturing industry can effectively promote the overall high-quality development of the sports industry, and eventually form a modern sports industry system that integrates the development of fitness leisure and competition performance, high-end manufacturing and modern service industry, thus making China develop from a big sports country to a real sports power.