| Since China has been confronted with resource depletion and energy constraint, it seems hard to further maintain its traditional extensive growth which is heavily dependent upon capitals, labor force, and natural resources. In other words, a transformation in economic growth is indispensable from the input-oriented style at present into an innovation-driven style with emphasis on technical advancement. The strategy of self-dependent innovation was firstly proposed at the 4th Plenum of 16 th CPC Central Committee and then acted as the guidelines for construction of an innovative nation. In 2006, Chairman Hu Jintao formulated an overall objective of developing into one of innovative countries in the world by the end of 2020, which is consistent with the strategy proposed later on in the 18 th National Congress of Communist Party of China, aimed at pursuing development based on innovative forces. All in all, it has been recognized that technical innovation remains its core status during China’s self-dependent development. Furthermore, the high-tech industry plays an essential role in industrial adjustment and upgrading process, thus arousing increasingly world-wide attention.As well known, the high-tech industry is characterized by fewer supplies, higher input, output, and risks, and more intensive knowledge & technology. It is worthy of note that in recent years, although the high-tech industry has developed dramatically in China, it still lacks state-of-the-art technologies and represents poor capability of independent innovation. The in-depth reason lies in the fact that innovative resources are invested insufficiently and improperly. As proved by developed countries, R&D input usually promotes innovative output. Does it suit China, a developing country who embraces over thirty years’ experience of reforms and opening-up? What’s real condition of innovative efficiency of every province or district in China? How does the high-tech industry strengthen innovative performance by utilizing a variety of technical resources? These issues are addressed in order to direct our attention to economic transformation from the traditional factors- and investment-driven pattern into an innovation-oriented development track by adjusting economic structure, eliminating resources’ bottleneck, and increasing added value of products. This article focuses on theoretical study related with technical innovation with the purpose of accelerating industrialization transformation.Based on a comprehensive review of literature at home or abroad with respect to innovation theories, innovative input-and-output relationship analysis, innovation performance, total factor productivity, and impact of different technical sources on innovation performance, the authors construct models to further explore the current condition of innovation growth in high-tech industries and in particular highlight the aspects of input-and-output correlation, technical efficiency and total factor productivity growth, and static and dynamic influence of different technical sources upon innovation performance, followed by some constructive suggestions. In the end, conclusions are made mainly in three areas as follows.1.The causal relationship is analyzed between the logarithms of innovation input(Expenditure on R&D or on New Products Development) and those of innovation output(Sales Revenue of New Products or Patent Applications) for five main high-tech industries covering 29 provinces during the period of 1995- 2011. To effectively solve the problem, a new approach is proposed on the basis of SUR systems and Wald tests with industry specific bootstrap critical values. The results indicate one-way causality from innovation output to innovation input in Manufacture of Computers and Office Equipments, one-way causality from innovation input to Patent Applications and from Sales Revenue of New Products to Expenditure on New Products Development in Manufacture of Medical Equipments and Measuring Instrument, one-way causality from Expenditure on new Products Development to Patent Applications and from Sales Revenue of New Products to Expenditure on new Products Development in Manufacture of Medicines, while in other industries there exists no causal relationships in either direction. Besides, there also exists one-way causality from expenditure on R&D to sales revenue of new products in Henan Province and Hunan Province, one-way causality from Sales Revenue of New Products to Expenditure on R&D in Guangdong, Hainan, Shanxi, Jiangxi, and Hubei Provinces, while in other provinces no causal relationship is found in either direction.2.R&D innovation efficiency of high-tech industries in 29 provincial regions is measures based on the panel data ranging from 1995 to 2011 by utilizing stochastic frontier production function and DEA. As the results show, the annual average technical efficiency remains low on the whole during the 17 years but with a yearly upward trend. In addition, the tested results of SFA and DEA are extremely low with an improvement space of 70%. Note that in the given period, TEP has risen by 8.4% more or less annually, attributed to technical progress of 6.7%, pure efficiency of 1.7%, and improvement in scale economy of 0.2%. Clearly, technical improvement has turned out to be main force in promoting TEP of high-tech industries in all provinces involved in China. To sum up, the provinces featured by strong innovation capability embrace a comparatively low growth rate of scale efficiency in high-tech industries, some even with negative rate; the annual growth rate of TEP shared by the eastern, the middle, and the western areas are positive in most cases, among which the eastern area ranks the first with the average of 9.9%, the western area the second of 9.1%, and the middle area the last of 7.7%, below the national average rate of 8.4%.3.The impact of three patterns of acquiring know-how(i.e. implementing in-house R&D, importing technology from abroad, and purchasing technology domestically) on innovative capability is estimated by employing stochastic frontier analysis. These investments on technology are assumed to generate different types of knowledge, which in turn contribute to enhancement of the technology innovative capability of firms. Based on a dataset constructed from a panel of 29 regions from 1995 to 2011, we estimate an aggregated patent production function with the region combination as units of analysis. It can be seen from the results that investment in foreign technology alone may fail to introduce innovative technology, unless it is coupled with a firm’s own effort made in in-house R&D. On the other hand, domestic technology purchase favorably influences innovation, which implies that China-based firms have little difficulty in absorbing technical knowledge at home. Since the correlative importance of these three types of technical knowledge differs across regions, we apply vector auto regression(VAR) to province-level panel data from hi-tech industry to explore the dynamic relationship between technical resources and innovation. The empirical results demonstrate that 1) the factors of R&D expenditures, domestic technology purchase, R&D personnel will surely play a positive role in innovation output but technology introduction has little effect on innovation output; 2) there exists an alternative relationship between R&D and technology imports, with the interaction between R&D and domestic technology purchase; 3) R&D personnel have a continuous positive impact on innovation output, with maximum impact on the lag two. Finally, this article puts forward some proposals correspondently.
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