The Geography of Chinese Science

Abstract

Chinese scientific output has increased dramatically in recent years, but its internal spatial structure has received scant attention. Estimated gravity models of intercity scientific coauthorships show that there are two types of spatial political bias in China, apart from the expected mass and distance effects. Intercity coauthorships involving Beijing are more common than Beijing's output volume and location would imply, and this Beijing bias is increasing over time. The second type o f spatial political bias is greater intraprovincial collaboration than is accounted for by size and distance. The geography o f Chinese science is thus not only monocentric as regards overall scientific output, but also exhibits unusually hierarchical collaboration patterns. Unlike in Europe and North America, national and regional capitals are becoming ever more important as scientific coordination centers.

The spatial configuration of innovation networks in China

“…Overall, the majority of variables are assessed with a 5-point Likert scale, on which a higher score denoted a higher degree of the item concerned, except the two dummy variables regional culture (North, South) and firm ownership (SOE, Non-SOE). The rank of each city or province in China's science and technology system (variable x 3 ) is established in accordance with Andersson et al (2014).…”

“…On the one hand, the Chinese science and technology (S&T hereafter) system has a strong hierarchical order, with Beijing dominating on the national scale, and provincial capitals dominating on provincial scales. Although the other smaller cities are improving their innovation abilities considerably, the firms still show the obvious preference for Beijing, without affecting the overall hierarchical structure (Andersson et al 2014). On the other hand, the legacy of China's Soviet-style innovation system, which was characterized by a high centralization of capacities in several main cities for providing well-trained engineers and new ideas to the local manufacturers (Liu and White 2001), plus the increasing innovation activities of privately owned enterprises, can lead to a strengthening of local collaboration (Hong 2008).…”

“…Only the stronger POEs and SOEs may possess higher innovation capability that enables them to establish overseas links. Otherwise, as far as knowledge partners are concerned, the transformation context and spatial bias of the Chinese S&T system become obvious (Hong 2008;Andersson et al 2014). Since the reform of the S&T sector around 2000, universities have been capable of carrying out basic as well as applied R&D and can play a major role, in particular with increasing innovation activities of privately owned enterprises, which brings about the enhancing of local collaboration (Hong 2008).…”

“…In the case of China, the government has a habitual idiosyncrasy to strengthen the innovation relation between firms and knowledge partners, which normally helps firms to transform knowledge into commercially successful products (Kafouros et al 2015). Moreover, political priorities are more important than economic factors in the location of cooperative choices: given the prevalence of administrative protectionism in China, involving an inward-looking orientation of governments to protect local and/or provincial actors with the aim of maximizing intraadministrative-district benefits, local or provincial collaboration is usually favored and promoted by governments (Scherngell and Hu 2011;Andersson et al 2014). Under these circumstances, firms often have to switch their innovation focus towards local and/or provincial cooperation (Jiang et al 2017).…”

“…They hence possess the ownership-specific advantages for obtaining innovation resources and benefit more easily from the construction of multi-scale innovation networks (Liefner and Zeng 2016). Thirdly, China's science and technology system is hierarchically organized (Andersson et al 2014;Huggins et al 2014). Finally, regions differ enormously with respect to culture, for example a flexible Southern Chinese culture versus a stability-oriented Northern Chinese culture, which affects the strengths and functions of ties between firms and their potential cooperation partners (Park and Luo 2001;Liefner and Zeng 2008;Fu et al 2013).…”