National innovation policies currently attract intense interest throughout the international community, particularly so in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. China is among those countries now relying heavily on government resources to drive innovation-a policy that directly challenges the prevalent theory that government powers have limited effects on a nation's innovation systems. Indeed, China's new indigenous innovation strategy has transformed the country's innovation systems. China's current indigenous innovation strategy is both constructive and efficient for an economy with clear targets for industrial innovation and working to catch up to international standards. For China to succeed as an innovative country it needs to provide more opportunity for market competition to incubate and generate radical innovations.

The study examines defining characteristics of the evolving Chinese innovation and standards system and explores possible impacts for China as well as the global economy. China considers standardization to be an essential tool for improving its innovative capacity, yet very little is known about this critical building block of China's innovation system. At the center of the analysis is a fundamental challenge for China's standardization strategy: How can China reconcile its primary objective of strengthening indigenous innovation with its leading role in international trade and deep integration into global corporate networks of production and innovation? This is a joint publication of the University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC) and the East-West Center.

Strategic government decisions concerning how an economy can transition from traditional trade specialization and reliance on imitation of imported knowledge to domestic technological innovation are known to influence countries' prospects for avoiding the middle-income trap and successfully catching up with industrial leaders. The successful strategies of several latecomers in East Asia compared with the failures of those of many latecomers from elsewhere highlight the importance of smart state-led choices to facilitate this process of economic transition. Within the last several years, mainland China, a middle-income economy, has embarked on its own state-led approach to catch up via a complex indigenous innovation (zizhu chuangxin) and intellectual property (IP) development strategy. Building on existing studies of technological catch-up, this Thesis focuses on how critical aspects of China's IP and innovation strategies deal with the significant challenges that China faces in its next stage of development. It focuses on how China is dealing with challenges such as moving from imitation to innovation, and enhancing competitiveness of indigenous firms in increasingly global value chains, while incumbents heavily use IP as barriers to entry. It also addresses threats to environmental and socio-economic sustainability, and the challenge of acquiring useful foreign technology in an environment where incumbents are reluctant to transfer frontier technology. The Thesis investigates the following questions in particular: (1) How can state-led IP strategy enable latecomers to catch up with advanced players? (2) How can state-led IP strategy support indigenous latecomers' catch-up efforts in increasingly globalized value chains (3) How can state-led strategy encourage innovations that address social and environmental challenges and foster economic catch-up? and (4) How can the state strategically acquire foreign technology that is useful for catch-up? Given China's size and impact on the rest of the world, how China responds to these challenges is of greatscholarly interest.

China is trying to turn its labor, capital and resources intensive, lower added-value and export dependent growth into a sustainable innovative economy. This is changing the world’s power balance and has sparked a race between East and West in knowledge-based, high added-value economic innovation. Inspired by their extensive experience in doing business with China, the authors show how the US, the EU and China have reached a crossroad where ten battle fields decide about their future earning capacity and prosperity. Whether China will be a threat or an opportunity depends on the main players in government, public and private organizations rethinking their innovation policies and paths of business development. This books offers a new view on innovation which can be applied by corporate leaders and policy makers to get ready for the future. ​

After almost twenty years of internationalization, Chinese firms have shown their growing innovation capability through benefiting from global networks and domestic efforts. However, how Chinese firm innovation is facilitated at the international and domestic levels remains to be understood. This book investigates innovation in China from three aspects. First, starting at the international level, the effects of Chinese–foreign linkages in innovation are examined from the relationship view and the foreign ownership perspective. Second, before moving to the domestic level, the moderating role of global networks (e.g., global supply chain collaboration) is examined to understand the relationship between competition of unregistered firms and innovation of registered firms. Third, at the domestic level, innovation is studied from both upstream and downstream of the value chain: consumers’ decision-making in innovative products and strategic choices, and environment constraints for product innovation. Collectively, this book actively investigates innovation in China at international and domestic levels. It investigates how the global networks contribute to innovation in China and how domestic Chinese firms strengthen their innovation capability. The volume, thus, makes an important attempt to extend existing knowledge on this subject and provides new insights to scholars and practitioners. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of International Studies of Management & Organization.

This book aims to answer the key question facing China in building an innovative country: What kind of indigenous innovation path with Chinese characteristics should be taken? This book conducts an in-depth analysis of the indigenous innovation path with Chinese characteristics from two dimensions: path evolution and level (enterprise, industry, region, and country). It puts forward the leading path of innovation with Chinese characteristics and also offers policy suggestions.