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Chinese governments at all levels have been using various policies to encourage innovation by firms. However, few studies considered the superimposed effects of multilevel innovation policies. Based on the panel data of 443 Chinese innovation–oriented firms from 2008 to 2011, this study investigates the complementarities between national and local science and technology programmes. The heterogeneous effects across stages of the innovation process are also considered. Results show that the national science and technology (S&T) programmes significantly increase firms' external research and development (R&D) expenditure but inhibit the commercialisation. In addition, the national and local S&T programmes complement each other in promoting external R&D expenditure while presenting substitutive in increasing patent outputs. This paper further finds that national and local programmes are more likely to be complementary at high subsidy intensity. This study contributes to the development of policy mix theory and has manifold implications for designing pertinent innovation policy systems [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By adopting a set of panel data from thirty provinces in China from 2007 to 2017, this paper examines how regional innovation efficiency is influenced by different types of innovation policies from a specific long-range plan ('National Medium- and Long-Term Science and Technology Development Plan (2006–20)'). We incorporate public direct research and development (R&D) grants, R&D tax credits, and intellectual property rights (IPR) protection into our research. We also explore the heterogeneous influences of these factors at different stages in regional innovation development. The results indicate that public direct R&D grants have a significantly negative influence, especially in innovation-catching-up regions. Conversely, the R&D tax credit has a considerably positive impact on innovation-catching-up regions. IPR protection plays various roles according to different innovation development stages. Specifically, IPR protection has a positive impact on innovation-leading regions, while it negatively influences regional innovation efficiency in innovation-catching-up regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China has become an impactful science superpower, but it is asserted that its influence provides it with disproportionate benefits that some national research policies have not thus far appreciated. To create context, Web of Science data are used to analyse research collaborations between the UK and China: trends in volume of output between 1981 and 2019; citation impact; and comparative performance across research fields. UK–China collaboration increased from fewer than 100 co-authored papers before 1990, to 750 per year in 2000, 3,324 in 2010, and 16,267 papers (10.9 per cent of UK output) in 2019. UK–China collaboration is concentrated in technology-based fields: in some (e.g. telecommunication), over 30 per cent of UK papers are in collaboration with Chinese-based researchers. The paper discusses the policy consequences to the UK of this indicative dependency, arguing that exiting from such collaborations is ill advised, provided the risks, perceived or real, are mapped, managed, and mitigated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on policy coordination between government agencies reveals little about how coordination is managed in centralized political systems. This paper, therefore, presents a dynamic and quantitative analysis of policy coordination in China based on the science and technology (S&T) policy documents issued by China's central government agencies in the period 1978–2019. From a series of snapshots depicting inter-agency policy development in five historical stages over this timeframe, we find that (1) policy coordination has developed steadily and has mainly occurred to interpret macro strategies and put in place more detailed implementation measures. (2) Ministries under the purview of the State Council have played a leading role in policy coordination, while other types of agencies have cooperated in more supporting roles. (3) Coordination efforts have mainly focused on inclusive and national demand-oriented themes, such as high-tech industrialization, rural S&T, and social development. This research offers a panoramic view of policy coordination trajectories and mechanisms in centralized political systems. As such, it adds to the analysis methods available for quantitatively studying policy documents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As an influential economic entity, China's economic growth pattern is changing. The traditional way brought high-speed growth as well as caused environmental damage. The concept of environmental innovation, which combines the advantage of technology innovation and environmental consideration, has become a vital means to achieve sustainable development. Due to the double externality characteristic of environmental innovation, the government plays an important role in its development. Based on provincial panel data from 2008 to 2017, this paper first examines the distinct influences of various economic incentive instruments on environmental innovation. Then, the moderation role of marketization is explored. The results show that governments' direct financial expenditure on environmental protection has a positive impact on environmental innovation, while the effect of the environmental tax is not significant. In addition, the impact is negatively moderated by marketization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Answering how and why policies emerge and interact with one another will advance our understanding of the evolution of policies. The paper investigates policy emergence as a practice defining possible policy objects in a specific domain and policy interaction as a practice enabling the defined objects. To trace the policy evolution, we define three types of citations to describe policymaking processes, establish the citation and co-citation networks of policy documents, and then conduct a natural language processing-based bibliometric analysis. We reveal the patterns of policymaking practices and identify the focal policies in a given domain. The results within the context of Chinese innovation and entrepreneurial policies suggest the information contained in focal policies drives the direction of future policy themes, as well as regular policies, tend to cite focal policies and follow the ideas of focal policies to achieve their goals. Our findings also provide some implications for Chinese future policymaking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China has launched a series of talent-recruitment policies in the last years, in order to attract back Chinese nationals who stayed abroad. Yet, little is known about the effect of such policies. This paper examines whether researchers recruited in one of the Chinese flagship talent-recruitment policies—the 'Young Thousand Talents' policy (Y1000T)—had, in the following years after recruitment, better research performance. We compare these recipients against other Chinese nationals who got PhDs in equally prestigious non-Chinese universities but continued to work abroad (mostly in the USA). Results of difference-in-differences regressions show that returning to China has an effect of positioning returnees both at the bottom and at the very summit of the distribution of quality of publications. Nevertheless, some Y1000T researchers seem to have prioritized the quantity of outputs, arguably to the detriment of quality. This is probably due to certain research evaluation criteria in place until recent times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the features of Triple Helix model in Shenzhen Special Economic Zone and analyses the driving forces of the featured model from the institutional logics perspective. The statist-fading balanced Triple Helix model in Shenzhen is characterized by (1) the loosened control of central government and (2) the balanced interaction of local government, industry, and university. The former character is closely related with the internal changes of state logics, i.e. the rescaling of state power due to decentralization, regional disparity, and global networks. The latter is driven by the structural overlap of state, market, and professional logics along with the transition of China from a centrally planned economy towards a market-oriented economy and the importance of innovation and learning in the knowledge society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In China, as elsewhere, the number of a firm's patent applications is regularly considered to be an indicator of its innovation capability. China's patent system, however, is peculiar in that government subsidies and official targets play a notable role in influencing individuals' patenting behaviour. Using company survey data, this paper examines the influence of firms' formal ties with the Communist Party of China (CPC) on their patenting behaviour. Taking the example of private small and medium-sized firms in the electronics industry of the Pearl River Delta, it establishes that the presence of CPC offices can be the strongest single predictor for patenting even when other factors are taken into account. This seems particularly noteworthy because earlier studies found that small and medium-sized firms in the Pearl River Delta were less susceptible to central government influence than other Chinese firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to explain the divergence in technological strategies among leading electric vehicle (EV) firms in China. EVs, with their prospect of energy efficiency and emission reduction, have attracted widespread attention in recent years. However, EV development still faces technological challenges. While these challenges are similar for all firms, their coping strategies are highly divergent. One of the main reasons is that the policy environment for Chinese EV developers is shaped by a multiplicity of institutional logics which are sometimes incoherent. This allows firms to selectively build on those institutional logics that meet their needs and priorities. This strategic behavior results in divergent technological paths. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In China the use of public procurement as an innovation policy instrument has been closely associated with the drive to promote indigenous innovation. Implementation was largely through the use of catalogues intended to signal and to formally accredit the supply and demand of technologically-oriented products. This paper reviews these experiences by examining the wider context and three case studies. Accreditation is shown to carry a risk of protectionism. Signaling performs a function analogous to a technology roadmap and was assisted by giving listed technologies priority for public procurement. For both types of instrument the intended mechanism did not work as planned but the broader role they sought to fill was an important factor in bringing innovations to market. The appropriateness and effectiveness of such instruments are shown to be dependent upon the state of both the innovation and the procurement systems in which they are set. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last century and a half, global technological leadership has shifted from Great Britain to the USA. In this paper we argue that China is positioning itself to assume global leadership in technology within the coming few decades. We identify three sources of competitive advantage for China's ascent in the global technology stakes: its massive domestic market, its centralized power and willingness to employ state-sponsored industrial policy and government support, and the process of globalization that continues to transform markets worldwide. After acknowledging skep- tical views of China's capacity to achieve global technology leadership, we survey the present state of affairs and assess its prospects for growth based on statistical evidence and multiple examples. We argue that the three sources of competitive advantage we explicate offer China a path to imminent global technological leadership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chinese universities have undergone a massive transformation in recent decades. In addition to a dramatic increase in the number of universities and students, universities have shifted from primarily providing education to emphasizing research. Omnipresent political control is to be replaced by stronger academic self-organization. The result so far is a growing stratification of Chinese universities, with a few select research universities receiving the bulk of government research funding and a large number of universities with very little public funding for research which focus primarily on education. The rapidly changing landscape, with growing numbers but also increasing stratification and with conflicting relations between political control and selforganization, has given rise to tensions within universities and within the higher education system. In this paper, we identify these tensions and discuss their implications for China's quest to establish world-class universities and to achieve the transition to an innovationoriented nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to understand the roles universities play in regional innovation systems in China. Specifically, it examines how Chinese practice concerning the engagement of the universities with society for promoting regional innovation systems differs from Western practices from the perspective of the Triple Helix. It focuses on China’s leading metropolis, Shanghai, and takes as a case study the Tongji Creative Cluster which, unlike most other clusters in China, is based on knowledge-intensive services rather than high-tech manufacturing. We find that although it is commonly assumed that the statist Triple Helix model characterises the development of the innovation system in China, the practices of the Tongji Creative Cluster take a different approach, combining both bottom-up initiatives in the initial stage and top-down coordination in later developments. We argue that this model is more useful for China’s regional innovation systems as it can overcome many challenges in the statist model. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]