40 Years of Technological Innovation in China: A Review of the Four-Stage Climbing Track

Abstract

This paper combs the landscapes of China’s technological innovation practice during the 40 years of reform and opening up, and describes it as “Four-Stage Climbing” that is, “Learning–Introducing–Supplying Stage” (LIS Stage), “Introducing–Imitating–Improving Stage” (III Stage), “Integrating–Boosting–Creating Stage” (IBC Stage), and the “Innovating–Iterating–Promoting Stage” (IIP Stage). It also explains the background of each stage and its specific innovation model. Furthermore, the paper emphasizes the main features, basic experiences and main lessons of China’s technological innovation practice during the past 40 years. This paper demonstrates that with the deepening of innovation-driven development, especially in the field of “Innovation Leads Development” which is valued by the country and industry, at this stage, it is urgent to pay closer attention to the following issues: first of all, the possible changes in mechanisms of international innovation competition and cooperation under the background of potential reconstruction for international governance; secondly, the occurrence and realization mechanism of Leading Scientific and Technological Innovation in the era of science and technology, as well as the structural and institutional mechanisms of the national innovation ecosystem, and also the ecological niche in which the future scientific innovation subject and technological innovation subject should be in the national innovation ecosystem; furthermore, the mechanism of innovation and development for “science-based industries”; last but not the least, the logical construction of innovation and development research under the Chinese context.

Understanding the Complexity of Regional Innovation Capacity Dynamics in China: From the Perspective of Hidden Markov Model

“…At this regional level, this study provides a specific standard to define the stage of innovation capacity development and how such a capacity evolves across different regions and over time. The results showed that China's RIC has experienced three states (i.e., low, medium, and high) that portrayed a similar pattern to that found by Lei et al [39], who argued that the development trajectory of China's technological innovation follows a process of "introducing-imitating-improving," "integrating-boosting-creating," and "innovating-iterating-promoting." However, this study further revealed the internal mechanism of a regional innovation system.…”

“…Since the reform and opening up in 1978, rapid development in terms of science, technology, and economy has been observed in China [39]. Specifically, China has made great effort in improving its innovation capacity.…”

An Empirical Study on Innovation Ecosystem, Technological Trajectory Transition, and Innovation Performance

“…Innovation performance (PER) has been defined from diverse perspectives by scholars (Kumar & Chanda 2018;Lei, Liu, Qi, and Zhang 2019;Sharma and Chanda 2017). For instance, Utterback and Abernathy (1975) defined that innovation performance consists of product innovation and process innovation.…”

Exploring the Formation Mechanism of Radical Technological Innovation

“…Technological innovation is a main power to promote economic growth (Chen & Lei 2020;Chen & Xie 2018;Hämäläinen & Inkinen 2019;Kumar and Chanda 2018;Lei et al 2019Lei et al , 2020Lu 2016;Sui and Liu 2020;Tan et al 2010;Wang et al 2007;Wipulanusat et al 2020;Xu et al 2008Xu et al , 2011Xu et al , 2013Xu et al , 2016Xu et al , 2018Xu et al , 2020Viriyasitavat 2014, 2019;Yang et al 2018;Zhang et al 2018). Particularly, radical technological innovation generates substantial competitive advantages for enterprises (Li 2018(Li , 2020.…”