Annotation Argues that, in order to address the growing economic, social, and political pressures of the 21st Century, China will have to build solid foundations for a knowledge-based economy by updating the economic and institutional regime, upgrading education and learning, and building information infrastructure.

The rapid pace of economic growth in China has been unprecedented since the start of economic reforms in late 1970s. It has delivered higher incomes and made the largest single contribution to global poverty reduction. Measured by international poverty lines, from 1978-2004, the absolute poor population in rural areas has dropped from 250 million to 26.1 million. Such gains are impressive and have been driven largely by a set of market-oriented institutional reforms, strong investment, and effective adoption and application of various knowledge and technologies, especially foreign ones through trade and foreign direct investment. While enjoying tremendous success, China also faces many challenges that need to be addressed to sustain its long-term development. These include weak institutions, low overall educational attainment, weak indigenous innovation capacity, poor links between research and development and industries, and so on. This paper provides an analysis of some strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and challenges to China's knowledge economy in the areas of economic incentives and institutional regime, human capital, innovation system, and information infrastructure.

A study of the development of the knowledge economy in China, and its future prospects. Twenty-three chapters cover such topics as: using knowledge for development; innovation and performance in Chinese manufacturing 1995; regional divergence in industrial structure.

The rapid pace of economic growth in China has been unprecedented since the start of economic reforms in late 1970s. It has delivered higher incomes and made the largest single contribution to global poverty reduction. Measured by international poverty lines, from 1978-2004, the absolute poor population in rural areas has dropped from 250 million to 26.1 million. Such gains are impressive and have been driven largely by a set of market-oriented institutional reforms, strong investment, and effective adoption and application of various knowledge and technologies, especially foreign ones through trade and foreign direct investment. While enjoying tremendous success, China also faces many challenges that need to be addressed to sustain its long-term development. These include weak institutions, low overall educational attainment, weak indigenous innovation capacity, poor links between research and development and industries, and so on. This paper provides an analysis of some strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and challenges to China's knowledge economy in the areas of economic incentives and institutional regime, human capital, innovation system, and information infrastructure.

Since 1995 China officially adopted the Strategy of Revitalizing China through Science and Education to advance towards the knowledge economy. Our paper aims to access China's progress using international indices of economic and innovation development (Knowledge Economy Index, Global Competitiveness Index, and Human Development Index). We also explore six types of public-private partnerships in innovation activities of the Chinese universities. They are: technology contracts, technology transfer, university-owned enterprises, joint research centers, independent colleges, and university-based science parks. For each partnership we study the role it played in intensification of research and education with an emphasis on government participation mechanisms. Based on the analysis of the official statistics the authors find that the progress of China to the knowledge economy is evident. China's government played a leading role in the construction of the knowledge economy providing legislation basis and financing. Public-private partnerships in innovation activities in the universities in China significantly contributed to the technological development of the country and the country's transition towards the knowledge economy. Studying successful experience of the public private-partnerships in the Chinese universities is a first step to possible adaptation of this mechanism in other countries, including Russia.