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Beyond catch-up: could China become the global innovation powerhouse? China’s innovation progress and challenges from a holistic innovation perspective
[Ecosystem as structure: an actionable construct for strategy]

Author

Listed:
  • Jin Chen
  • Ximing Yin
  • Xiaolan Fu
  • Bruce McKern

Abstract

Over the past century and a half, global technological leadership has shifted from Europe to the United States, while scholars argue that the world has seen that it is now shifting from the United States to China due to China’s extraordinary catch-up in the past four decades, in which the public policy-oriented national innovation system development plays a critical role that might provide an alternative way for innovation-driven development especially for emerging markets. Even though encountering many challenges ahead, China is positioning itself to take over the global innovation leadership in the next few decades. Here in this article, we introduce a serious yet underexplored question: could China go beyond catch-up and become the global innovation powerhouse? Specifically, drawing from the holistic innovation perspective, which is an original theoretical paradigm for the mission-oriented innovation policy change, this article critically reviews, both qualitatively and quantitatively, China’s remarkable innovation progress and main drivers in comparison with G7 countries plus South Korea and India, trying to provide a comprehensive and critical view of state-of-the-art research on China’s innovation catch-up. We further explore the five major challenges that China must take seriously when marching toward the global innovation powerhouse. Finally, we propose a mission-oriented holistic STI policy design framework for both China and other emerging economies to go beyond catch-up in a competitive dynamic world. This article provides a new and holistic perspective to access China’s innovation progress and challenges, also generates novel insights for scholars and public agencies to contribute to global innovation development, with a shared goal of achieving global sustainable development in the post-COVID-19 pandemic world.

Suggested Citation

  • Jin Chen & Ximing Yin & Xiaolan Fu & Bruce McKern, 2021. "Beyond catch-up: could China become the global innovation powerhouse? China’s innovation progress and challenges from a holistic innovation perspective [Ecosystem as structure: an actionable constr," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 30(4), pages 1037-1064.
  • Handle: RePEc:oup:indcch:v:30:y:2021:i:4:p:1037-1064.
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    Cited by:

    1. Feng, Wei & Yuan, Hang & Shao, Xin, 2024. "Does China Have an “Innovation Paradox”? Evidence from Chinese Colleges and Universities," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 134(C).
    2. Benlu Hai & Ximing Yin & Jie Xiong & Jin Chen, 2022. "Could more innovation output bring better financial performance? The role of financial constraints," Financial Innovation, Springer;Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, vol. 8(1), pages 1-26, December.

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