With the aid of an empirical case study of the automobile industry in China, we explore how, under certain political–economic conditions, the investments of transnational corporations (TNCs) can be shaped to meet the state's objectives. We develop the concept of ‘obligated embeddedness’ to capture the dynamics of this process. We show that foreign direct investment in the automobile industry in China is a type of market-led and embedded investment which is characterised by joint ventures and the follow-up network configurations. However, to achieve such obligated embeddedness on the part of TNCs—and for the state and its citizens to gain its benefits—the state not only has to have the theoretical capacity to control access to assets located within its territory, but also the power actually to determine such access.

Uneven and combined development. Regional Studies. The concept of uneven and combined development (U&CD) interprets dynamic historical change and comparative geographical differentiation in terms of the co-existence of tendencies towards differentiation and equalization of the conditions of production, consumption, distribution and exchange, deriving from capital accumulation and political multiplicity. U&CD entails a conception of the global system as a constellation of interdependent, national institutional configurations and interests that shape international/national/regional trends. To explain geographies of industrialization and urbanization and current trends towards a pluri-centric world, U&CD requires, however, a specification of the underlying causal mechanisms, examined in economic geography, international relations and developmental state theories.