Regional effects of technological transition in China how relatedness and integration shape provincial development

ABSTRACT

Based on a newly compiled set of Chinese data, this paper puts established assumptions on the role of technological variety in perspective. It does so from two main angles. First, by documenting whether, in China, the technological variety has played a similar role for regional development as in Western economies. Second, by exploring how, more recently, this may change as China transitions towards an innovation-driven economy. In summary, its findings suggest that, while technological variety has indeed so far mattered differently for China’s regional development, more recently, first traces of systemic change can be identified in both evolution of related variety and its emerging impact on aspects of regional development.

KEYWORDS:

• China
• related variety
• catch-up
• technology portfolio
• patenting

Classification (JEL):

• Regional Development O53 Country Studies
• Asia
• Regional Growth
• Development
• Change

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors

Henning Kroll is Head of Business Unit at the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research, adjunct professor at the Leibniz Universität Hannover and visiting professor at the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. His research interests include innovation studies and regional economic development.

Peter Neuhäusler is Senior Researcher at the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research in Karlsruhe and guest researcher at the Chair of Innovation Economics at the Technical University of Berlin. His research interests include innovation studies and the development of innovation indicators.

Notes

1 Transnational patent filings have been proposed as an internationally comparable measure of patent filings by Frietsch and Schmoch (2010). Transnational patents are patents filed via the PCT-procedure at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) or at the European Patent Office, excluding double counts. They can also be described as patent families with at least an EPO- or a PCT-member.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft [grant number KR4895/2-1].