Challenges to research systems, academic research and knowledge production in East Asia: learning from the past to inform future policy

Knowledge as fuel for learning societies in a globally competitive and uncertain world

The world has reached its highest level of accumulated tangible and intangible knowledge. Within the scope of their resources and opportunities, governments and organisations around the world are seeking to augment their capabilities in the production and absorption of new knowledge (Crespi & Quatraro, 2015). Underpinning technological innovation and economic competitiveness in national and organisational settings is a virtuous cycle of knowledge accumulation, fostered through interaction between the production of new knowledge and the rapid comprehension and application of this knowledge. This process involves fast-changing competitive dynamics between countries and between organisations, which has been described as a knowledge or innovation race (Horta & Veloso, 2007). The rationale for such a race, namely competition between countries and between organisations, is not new. Competition per se is transversal to human evolution and history. Other aspects, however, are new. One is the importance of knowledge creation in societies that are increasingly recognising the benefits and challenges of socially, economically and culturally regional and global integration and dependent on knowledge-related processes to become more dynamic, competitive and innovative (Stigliz & Greenwald, 2014). Tension persists between Schumpeterian pushes and established social, political and cultural forces that mediate the changes undergone by societies as they adapt to the technological advancement brought by new knowledge. This involves a balancing act between the need for disruption (to adapt to the changes brought about by new knowledge and technology) and the need for stability (to enable societies to continue to operate) (e.g., Roco & Bainbridge, 2013).

Another new aspect is the fast pace of global competition, and the uncertainty that it generates as new knowledge is translated into new technologies whose implementation makes past technologies and associated knowledge obsolete. Such new technologies themselves require constant updating (Adner & Kapoor, 2016). Economic structures that rely on obsolete knowledge (and their influence on societal stability and arrangements) degrade quickly, and adaptation to and engagement with new knowledge infused technologies often represent major challenges. To address the vulnerabilities created by these challenges, the use of heterogeneous knowledge bases combined with constant knowledge updating and creation represent the best resilience strategies (Hills, Michalena, & Chalvatzis, 2018). Moreover, the rapid introduction of new technologies has opened immense opportunities but also created both unintended and intended disruptions that jeopardised sustainability as societies became shaped by inordinate consumerism. This has fostered daunting challenges related not only to climate change and environmental sustainability, but also to growing social and economic inequalities and the disruption of welfare states and societal safety nets. Such disruptions have raised social and economic mobility expectations and often left them unmet. They have also led to waves of political and ideologically driven deregulations and changes to public private spheres and their relationships, which have blurred borders and created tension worldwide (e.g., Li, 2015). The changing geopolitical forces and dynamics associated with the end of the Cold War and the emergence of new regional and global powers, and the global undermining of checks and balances since the end of the Second World War and subsequently the fall of the Berlin Wall, have ushered in a brave new world facing mounting complex challenges. It has been argued that technology wars, not trade wars, will define the 21st century’s geopolitical dynamics (Walton, 2007). This process is bound to enlarge the role of knowledge in tackling complex challenges, driving social and economic development at local, national, regional and global levels, and defining competition dynamics (Carayannis, Barth, & Campbell, 2012).

Knowledge affects the everyday lives of people everywhere, and policy makers, academics and researchers are concerned not only with its promotion but also with its governance. In this context, the nature of knowledge production is progressively changing, becoming more organised, systemic, and structured. In addition, the idea of the isolated researcher and inventor has been replaced by an emphasis on research teams, and the structuring of research takes disciplinary, multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary forms, which compete in terms of prominence, resources and purpose (Carayannis, Campbell, & Rehman, 2016). The identities, establishment and legitimisation of research processes and products are undergoing tremendous transformation, including the acceptance of peer review as one of the best – albeit not perfect – ways to evaluate research (this understanding, which today is a given, was not really fully established until after the Second World War; Chubin & Hackett, 1990). As more resources are invested in research, with increasingly high stakes, the method of peer review is today partly challenged and partly complemented by bibliometric indicators and other forms of assessment in a movement related to evaluative pressure not only from peers, but also from the new public management ideology, funding agencies and other stakeholders (Espeland & Sauder, 2016). Current scientific ideas and norms have been globalised and legitimised by national and international scientific associations (Drori, Meyer, Ramirez, & Schofer, 2003), together with the increasingly international and collaborative nature of science. The global mobility and migration of researchers and students have contributed substantially to this trend, driven largely by the declining costs of travel and communication technologies and increasing public policy funding and private investment in research and education (Ackers & Gill, 2008).

Science has become global. This trend has been fostered not only by researchers’ increasing collaboration, mobility, migration and internationalisation, but also by companies’ increasing tendency to source knowledge globally to gain comparative advantages in innovation and secure broader, multi-site global production lines (Buckley, 2014). In recent decades, research has involved increasingly intense and complex collaboration between universities, governments, civil society, businesses and other organisations (Carayannis & Campbell, 2019). The increased importance of the knowledge produced and the source of investment in knowledge, particularly business sector investment, has fostered the development of intellectual property rights and its implementation. The belief in the need to transfer academically produced knowledge to firms has also led to the establishment of incentives to promote university-industry collaboration, fostering debate on the boundaries concerning the public and private spheres and the common good in science and research (Tirole, 2017). This debate has not reached a consensus, and has been increasingly concerned with the aims and purposes of research organisations and of universities, the missions and goals of the research enterprise (which may be understood to lie on a spectrum from altruistic to economically opportunistic objectives and values; Klavans & Boyack, 2017), and research and academic ethical concerns associated with production and collaboration within the research process (Dickenson, 2013)

In this process, one cannot ignore the importance of the massification of higher education, which created the critical mass of people needed to ensure absorptive capacity in knowledge societies, but also to stimulate creativity and demand for the increasingly sophisticated products and services associated with increasingly complex lifestyles (Phelps, 2013). Drawing on human capital theories devised in the 1960 s and encouraged by international organisations such as the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and World Bank, countries have invested substantial resources in educating their populations and increasing their research capacity. There are several reasons to implement public policies that promote the education of populations. The following two are central and associated with the transition of post-industrial societies into learning societies, impacted by the development of information and communication technologies (ICT) (Lundvall, 2010), p. 1) A more highly educated population is better able to learn complex concepts, processes and methodologies, and absorbs knowledge much more efficiently. 2) Educating a larger proportion of the population makes the labour force more knowledgeable, creative and innovative. A larger number of highly qualified researchers, usually holding doctorates, can dedicate themselves to high-end learning activities and therefore create new and better knowledge. The objective is again to create a virtuous cycle of knowledge accumulation and creation. New knowledge leads to more effective ways to use raw materials, and therefore generates new products and services (see Conceição & Heitor, 1999).

This could not be achieved without the adherence of populations worldwide, influenced by either the globally legitimised values and norms that influence social and educational systems (Ramirez & Christensen, 2013); the perceived importance of having educational credentials as symbols of legitimised knowledge to acquire social status and access to higher occupations (Brown, 2001); and/or an understanding of changing labour markets and the potential gains of having the appropriate skillsets to meet the demands of globalised knowledge economies (Stehr, 2016). The adherence of populations to educational processes demanded governments to broaden access to higher levels of education, as families saw education as the best investment for the future for their children. This process has both transformed societies and reflected societies’ ongoing changes, influencing the behaviours of their populations. For example, the processes of massification of higher education are associated with the dynamics of urbanisation, social stratification and social and economic inequality worldwide, despite national variations (Marginson, 2016). The public and private mix of higher education provision and financing – or, more specifically, the growing marketisation of higher education – inevitably raised complex governance issues for contemporary universities (Teixeira & Dill, 2011). The massification of higher education has had unintended impacts on the development of higher education. One of them is the stratification of universities, derived from concentration of funding on a few universities to make them globally competitive, leading students to be categorised into different social classes (Mok & Jiang, 2017). The massification of higher education systems ended up challenging the conventional wisdom of human capital theories, as more and more university graduates face unemployment and underemployment (Mok and Qin, 2019).

In the process of massifying higher education systems to support social and economic change and build capacity for research systems, research universities play a central role. They help to drive forward fundamental, basic and applied research, contributing to the internalisation and internationalisation of scientific norms and ideals. They become role models for a mixed competitive and collaborative knowledge-based orientation, while transforming themselves into engines of social and economic development (Powell, 2018). For policy makers in advanced, catching-up, and developing economies, the largest challenge has been to best balance the development of higher education systems such that they can cater to diverse learning needs while preserving strong research dynamics both locally, nationally and globally (Heitor & Horta, 2016). Policies fostering institutional and programmatic diversity in higher education systems have not always been successful, due to pressure from higher education institutions with different goals and academic and institutional drifts and the constraints of complex and even contradictory economic, financial, cultural and social forces (Teichler, 2006). The research mission of higher education systems is always highly sought after for reasons related to positional goods and prestige – commodities that give universities and those working in them motivations, ideals and rewards different from those of other organisations in society (Vught, 2008), particularly organisations with which universities are given incentives to collaborate.

In the movement towards knowledge societies, public policy has focused on universities, as they are society’s key producers of knowledge, providers of education at the highest levels, and repositories of cultural and social values and norms. Universities are at the centre of innovation systems in both producing and transferring knowledge, whether at global, regional, national or local levels (Hawkins & Mok, 2015). Societal expectations of and investment in universities have led to their transformation, which mirrors the transformation of society itself. Governments have gradually adopted a ‘supervision at a distance’ stance, typical of the evaluative states that emerged from the new public management reforms associated with the neo-liberal political ideas structuring the public systems of most countries in the world since the 1980s. Universities have been required to adapt to this stance (Capano, 2010). Some of their changes are real and effective, whilst others are more of a smokescreen – something of which universities have always been masters (Kehm, 2014). This process of adaptation requires universities to appear more engaged with the needs of society. Universities have thus started to adopt designations such as ‘entrepreneurial universities’, presenting themselves as engines of growth to prevent them from being perceived as ivory towers (Audretsch, 2014). Some of these changes result from greater scrutiny by governments as part of a demand for more transparency and accountability for the public funding invested in them. This reflects not only a lack of trust in universities’ activities but also the desire to reform them (Olssen, 2016). Unsurprisingly, debates on the accountability and autonomy of universities are growing, witnessing the changing governance of universities across the globe and their engagement with other stakeholders in wider society (Jarvis & Mok, 2019; Mok, 2019).

Part of the push for reforms is a focus on performance-based funding, which is associated with academic research practices aligned with corporate logics, mindsets and ideals that emphasise both corporate efficiency and rewarding the ‘best’. Inevitably, therefore, this focus creates ‘meritocratic’ inequalities (Mateos-Gonzalez & Boliver, 2019). These dynamics result from a greater understanding of the key incentives for increasing research output and productivity, and the realisation that although both intrinsic and extrinsic factors are needed to motivate successful research, the latter are far more relevant (Cesaroli, Nicklin, & Ford, 2014). This has given rise to a culture of measurement and competition, focusing on research outputs and outcomes, supported by performativity ideals that have created tensions within both the traditional university culture of collegiality and academic autonomy (Sutton, 2017). This change has accelerated academic research processes while underlining the importance of delivering concrete deliverables within the time span of 2 to 5 years, as common for research projects funded by research funding agencies (Levin & Aliyeva, 2015). This competitive environment, part of the dynamics of academic capitalism, has led to the mass production of research outputs, but also raised substantial doubt about their ability to fulfil the actual innovative research agendas desired by policy makers when devising and implementing them (Horta & Santos, 2019). Some scholars have argued that although more research is being produced, much of it is generated merely to tick evaluative boxes, at the expense of high-quality research that could effectively lead to knowledge breakthroughs (Young, 2015). Concurrently, there is increased evidence that despite the larger volume of tangible research products, the output of innovations capable of impacting and transforming society is decreasing. This raises concerns about the alignment of incentives and policies with their expected outcomes (Huebner, 2005). Associated with these trends, fostered by national and institutional policies, are reports of precarity, increased strain and stress, and less creative environments for researchers (e.g., Stephan, 2012).

The aforementioned policies and processes have also changed the valuation of research and similar publications. Two trends in this regard are critical. First, particular value is now attached to publications in the English language (the current lingua franca of science) in peer-reviewed journals indexed by specific abstract search indexes that are considered legitimate, such as the Web of Knowledge (Chou, Lin, & Chiu, 2013). Books are still valued in some disciplines, but book chapters and other publication outlets are undervalued. Although this is problematic for some disciplinary fields, such as the social sciences, arts and humanities, there are efforts underway to change this pattern and more fairly evaluate social sciences and humanities research outputs (Reale et al., 2018). Second, policy makers and evaluators emphasise research that has the potential for impact and is not simply an intellectual activity lacking in practical applicability (Olssen, 2016). The US government’s science policy, strongly inspired by a report by Vannevar Bush, and still successful today, clearly underlines the importance of having a strong body of fundamental and basic research as the groundwork for applied research and experimental development, and stresses that basic and fundamental research does not have to be conceived with applicability in mind to be practically useful (Zachary, 2018). Nevertheless, in recent decades, evidence of impact has been aligned with universities’ need to share their publicly funded knowledge with companies and civil society, and emphasis has been placed on industry-university (and university-society) collaborations, usually focused on research. Such collaborations are increasingly important because they are seen as key to fostering social and economic development and competitiveness (Bolling & Eriksson, 2016). In this process, support for the creation of start-ups, spin-offs and patent portfolios has become essential for universities, which have also gained new structures, such as technology transfer offices (Etzkowitz & Goktepe-Hulten, 2010).

Through their traditional engagement in teaching and research, but also through their service mission and associated structures, universities have become an integral part of research and innovation systems. Their role in promoting social and economic development at local, regional and national levels is well established, and their ability to create and support high-technology clusters is highly desirable for countries (Veugelers, 2016). While transforming themselves into hybrid organisations with externally participated governing bodies and greater input into social and economic development (Jongbloed, 2015), universities have also started to create new structures to aid their efforts to internationalise their profiles and activities. These structures are often related to academic research. Curricula, research centres, administrative personnel and infrastructure must be structured to receive international students and academics, and international centres must be created to support them. The internationalisation of academia is associated with research collaboration, which is desired by universities (and countries) because it helps universities to place high in prestigious university world rankings. This helps to attract funding and talent (e.g., students and academics), which not only boost the human capital of the universities (and their respective countries), but also financially facilitate a broad set of scholarly activities and investments (Hazelkorn, 2015). Marketing and branding are critical to universities and countries in an age of student consumerism, not only because they attract international students to undergraduate degrees (Tomlinson, 2016), but also because they provide the tangible and intangible resources needed for research universities to maintain their competitiveness in research worldwide (Munch, 2014). Although emphasising research certainly advances institutions’ reputation, as reflected in various global university rankings, concerns about the quality of student learning and teaching are increasing. Issues relating to quality are also becoming more important with the growth of the ‘publish and perish’ phenomenon across systems (Mok, 2017; Mok, Welch and Kang, 2020).

Challenges to knowledge production and research systems in East Asia

East Asian countries have long been part of the global research sphere, but they entered this sphere at different times. This divergent entry was associated not only with countries’ differences in economic status on the global stage, but also with variation in their social, economic and political path dependencies. For example, China is today acknowledged as a scientific important player globally; it has achieved economic prominence and is turning into an increasingly important technology developer, becoming the second largest economy in the world as measured by gross domestic product. Its knowledge-related emergence is perceived with a mix of awe and concern by policy makers from scientifically and economically developed countries worldwide, which expect to confront a new knowledge competitor in the ongoing global race (Veugelers, 2017). Researchers tend to see this rise with awe, and multiple recent publications have focused on assessing this growth and its implications (e.g., Xie & Freeman, 2019).

However, this phenomenon is not really new. In the 1970s, Japan was also developing its technological base very rapidly; its knowledge production was developing at a slower pace, but still made Japan a prominent scientific powerhouse (Narin & Frame, 1989). During the 1970s and 1980s, the economic rise of Japan, like that of China today, raised concerns among North American and European countries, because it was posing strong competition to their previously globally dominant economies (Mastanduno, 1991). In this regard, it is also impossible to dismiss the ‘Korean miracle’. The Republic of Korea is the only member of the OECD to have transformed itself within just a few decades from a developing country with a low- to mid-level technological economic structure into a developed high-tech based economy (Harvie & Lee, 2003). Alongside this remarkable technological and economic achievement, Korea has accumulated a strong knowledge base, evolving from engineering to scientific activities (Choung & Hwang, 2013). In tandem with this evolution, the higher education system has helped to give Korea one of the most highly qualified labour forces in the world. On a smaller scale, but also with a global impact, is the rise of Taiwan’s technological sector, particularly its semiconductor and ICT related industry, which enabled it to compete with larger and more well-known technology clusters in other countries (Tung, 2001).

East Asian countries have a recent history of fast technological and economic development, which should not be overly surprising considering that in terms of knowledge production and innovation, this region of the world has been a centre of intellectual and technological development since ancient times (Goble, Robinson, & Wakabayashi, 2009). At the same time, these countries’ resilience and their motivation and determination to develop, rooted in the cultural and societal characteristics of their indigenous populations, should not be underestimated, as the impressive developments that these countries underwent incurred incalculable investment, commitment and social and personal costs (e.g., Harvie & Lee, 2003). In a rather simplistic form, the greatest communality between these cases is the strong involvement of the government and public policies in driving sometimes disruptive development, coupled with significant long-term public investment (e.g., Tung, 2001). Apart from size considerations, the major differences between Japan, Korea and Taiwan and the more recent case of China probably lie in their policies. The policies of Taiwan, Korea and Japan long focused on technology importation, only later backed up by a national knowledge base (Odagiri & Goto, 1996); those of China combined technological importation with the creation of a strong knowledge base to support innovation (Welch & Zhang, 2008).

Despite the impressive evolution of knowledge creation processes in East Asian countries, with corresponding social and economic development, their research and higher education systems face structural and adaptability challenges in contributing to and competing in the global knowledge race. These countries are strongly engaged in promoting their higher education systems and universities, trying to create research universities with a global scope, and investing strongly in national programmes to help them achieve prominence (e.g., Shin, 2009). However, despite fostering development, not all of these initiatives have achieved their expected outcomes. Therefore, calls have been made to adapt these policies, because research investment in a few selected universities is creating systemic, institutional and geographical imbalances that may undermine the formal learning roles and contributions of higher education systems as a whole (e.g., Hu, Guo, & Hou, 2017; Zong & Zhang, 2019). This transformation has been challenging in many respects. Besides the organisational tensions and power struggles involved in adapting national universities to participate in global knowledge production and collaboration (Jin & Horta, 2018), engaging in research and knowledge creation is relatively new for many of these universities, whose previous role was one of assimilating outside knowledge and teaching students (Cummings, 1994). Several of the incentives designed to stimulate the production rather than the quality of publications have substantially increased publication output, but with relatively low evidence of impact. This may be due to the pressure felt by researchers and academics to publish relatively quickly if they wish to progress in their careers (Tian & Lu, 2017). Associated with research-related incentives, researchers and academics in these countries feel the pressure to publish in the English language and with a format, content and structure that fits international publications and audiences (which for some researchers is a real challenge). A possible result of this is growing evidence of unethical behaviour coupled with difference in cultural understanding of the meanings of authorship and collaboration. This may undermine East Asian researchers’ potential to collaborate and the value of their contributions to the global knowledge pool (Balve, 2014). Reviewing China’s recent achievements in research and knowledge transfer related activities, Mok, Welch and Yang (2020) cautioned that the ‘rush to’ transformations in Chinese higher education may lead to plagiarism and problems with power relations, politics and university governance.

Another issue involves attracting highly qualified researchers to certain East Asian jurisdictions (Hong Kong is an exception; see Postiglione & Jung, 2017). Many research universities and other institutions in East Asia struggle to create appropriate conditions to attract and nurture talent from abroad (e.g., Shin & Gress, 2018). They consistently rely on reverse brain-drain policies and local talent to foster knowledge creation, which may not be sufficient to increase competitiveness. Although the internationalisation of research activities has been successful in some disciplinary domains, it is underexplored in other disciplinary domains in which East Asian countries could have an important say (Yang, 2018). Internationalising research is critical in East Asia, as it is linked to tensions in the balance between local versus international focus, and the indigenous versus ‘Westernised’ adoption of knowledge and knowledge legitimisation (e.g., Lo & Hou, 2019). Some of these tensions result from the past and current adoption of university and research models from abroad. Such models are adopted to modernise and internationalise local research and higher education systems in East Asia, because they are perceived as more effective than local models (Kim, 2007). However, and possibly related to these dynamics, efforts to internationalise knowledge creation and attract human capital to engage in research activities in East Asia continue to face challenges, despite several programmes and substantial investment by national governments, which – like research institutions and universities – are undermined by international/global/national tensions and conflict (Burgess, Gibson, Klaphake, & Selzer, 2010).

When analysing such international/global/national tensions from the East Asian perspective, some researchers in the region have strongly recommended asserting the strong traditions and cultures of scholarship in the East when benchmarking and learning from the West. According to Altbach, ‘every academic institution in contemporary Asia has its root in one or more of the Western academic models. Patterns of institutional governance, the ethos of the academic profession, the rhythm of academic life, ideas about science, procedures for examination and assessment, in some cases the language of instruction, and a myriad of other elements are Western in origin’ (Altbach, 1998, p. 40). In their quest for world-class university status to assert global leadership through various forms of research and other scholarly activities, universities in Asia should seek new ways to position themselves as leaders rather than conforming to ‘Anglo-Saxon’ and ‘North-American’ assessment criteria. For instance, commenting on China’s rise in global university rankings for science, Postiglione observed that ‘top-tier universities [in China] are coming to resemble their OECD counterparts’, which is not surprising given that Chinese universities are caught between ‘the goals of internationalisation and safeguarding national sovereignty’ and the government encourages ‘Sino-foreign cooperation along the stern warnings of its dangers’(Postiglione, 2015, p. 239). Undoubtedly, as Mok and Kang (2020) pointed out, ‘selectivity and resource concentration can lead to the rapid growth and expansion of research universities; however, overemphasis on international benchmarking can likewise lead to homogenisation of research HEIs and the loss of cultural identity’ (p. 12). When addressing these international/global/national tensions, Asian research and university systems should demonstrate the unique value of higher education by sharing success stories in research, teaching and student learning and promoting wide engagement with its rich and important traditions, values and practices (Mok & Kang, 2020; Park, 2018; Yang, 2018).

A final issue relates to the focus of investment on the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), to the detriment of a broader scientific spectrum that includes the social sciences and humanities. Research institutes and universities in Asia have been called upon to deepen their collaboration with businesses, industries and wider society not only to commercialise their research projects but also to realise wider economic, social and cultural outcomes (Mok & Jiang, 2020). As such processes of transformation have driven universities to engage in innovation-centric entrepreneurship, funding today tends to favour the ‘hard’ sciences over the humanities and social sciences (Jiang & Mok, 2018). Focusing investment on STEM fields is understandable, given their close connection with technological and economic development. However, overemphasising these fields may constrain the development of products and services that increasingly combine technical with user components, as such combinations require the social sciences, arts and humanities to be integrated with STEM through multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches (Sonetti, Arrobio, Lombardi, Lami, & Monaci, 2020). Such integration will be difficult if only a few of these disciplinary fields are developed, limiting countries’ adjustment to technological shifts and ability to design complex products and solutions (Garza & Travis, 2019). This is particularly relevant at a time when the stakeholders in research governance increasingly include academics, researchers, government officials, and civic and business actors in quintuple, quadruple and triple helix formats, which promote innovation and knowledge exchange along with social and economic development (Carayannis & Campbell, 2019). Such activities demand investment and flexibility in policy and organisational structures, and if East Asian countries wish to lead such development, attention needs to be paid to the problem of unbalanced investment both now and the future.

The contribution of this special issue

This special issue assesses current trends in East Asian jurisdictions through the lenses of those from these jurisdictions or working in them. Jisun Jung highlights the challenges that knowledge systems will face with the advent of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the need for policymakers and actors in higher education and research systems to become more attuned to and reimagine their roles to adapt to the transition from knowledge distribution to knowledge mutation. The contributions in this issue also demonstrate the importance of governments’ role in stimulating the development of an innovative and knowledge-based economy and committing to steady progress in this arena through strong public funding investment in the long term. The case of Hong Kong, examined by William Yat Wai Lo and Hei-Hang Hayes Tang, and that of Shenzhen, discussed by Mok, Welch and Kang, illustrate different forms of governance of knowledge production, stakeholder relations and the intricacies of public policy concerning research, higher education and innovation, along with their impact on knowledge evolution and the current challenges faced by society. Research collaboration is analysed from different perspectives. Yuyang Kang and Jin Jiang identify the actors in research systems and underline the importance of complementarities and mutually reinforcing innovation networks in stimulating collaboration on knowledge creation and transfer in cross-border city innovation systems in China. The contributions by Yonezawa and colleagues and Chan and colleagues focus on the challenges that remain to the internationalisation of research and higher education in some East Asian countries. Yonezawa, Hammond, Brotherhood, Kitamura and Kitagawa highlight the challenges faced by interdisciplinary research ventures in East Asian research environments and the need to do more than merely establish hybrid institutional forms to promote such institutes. They argue that governments and policymakers must commit to forging long-term sustainable international connections and relations with a variety of external stakeholders. Finally, Horta and Shen’s analysis identifies several challenges to knowledge production in China, including the need to broaden investment to include a greater range of scientific domains and the need to shift the focus of knowledge creation from quantity to visibility and impact.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.