An Evaluation Of The International Competitiveness Of China's High-Technology Industry: A Theoretical, Methodological And Empirical Study

Since the end of the 20^th century,along with a series of important science discoveries and technology breakthroughs,the high-technology industry has grown rapidly and become the leading force of global economy.The countries,especially developed countries and newly industrialized countries,who gradually took the high-technology industry as their pillar industry instead of traditional industries,all pay close attention to the evolving status of international competition of high-technology industry,and adjust competitive strategy accordingly,so as to upgrade the international competitiveness of their high-technology industry.Since about twenty years ago,through severe domestic and international competition,the scale of China's high-technology industry has continuously expanded rapidly.China has become one of the largest countries of high-technology industry in the world,but the low efficiency manifests that China's high-technology industry stays in an unbalanced situation.Michael E.Porter points out that dynamic and evolving competition is the precondition to construct a nation's industrial advantage.Currently,China is confronted with the problem of how to evolve competitive strategies to upgrade the international competitiveness of high-technology industry.As a discussion of that problem,the dissertation firstly reviews the theory of comparative advantage,the theory of competitive advantage of nations,the theory of the sources of industrial leadership based on evolutionary economics and the theory of the new competitive advantage from capabilities and innovation perspective;secondly,it constructs a canonical theoretical framework of multilayer systems,consisting of the subsystems of international competitive performance and international competitive driving factors of high-technology industry;thirdly,it constructs normative comprehensive index systems and synthetical models for evaluating international competitive performance and driving factors of high-technology industry separately;fourthly,it empirically evaluates the international competitive performance and driving factors of high-technology industry of main countries,and analyses the mechanism and efficiency of the driving factors functioning on the competitive performance extensively;finally,based on a deep discussion of the above evaluating conclusions, it brings forward some strategic and policy suggestions,which may help China's high-technology industry to upgrade its international competitiveness.The main conclusions of the dissertation are as follows:(1) From 2000 to 2005, the comprehensive competitive performance and scale performance of China's high-technology industry had been raised in a large scale,showed a relative strong advantage.Among the sub-sections of high-technology industry,computers and office equipments manufacturing and electronic and telecommunication equipments manufacturing advanced side by side so rapidly that their comprehensive competitive performance caught up with the counterparts of USA.(2) The scores of the indices of the international competitive performance for China's high-technology industry were very skew,and efficiency performance was very low,so a marginal rise of efficiency performance score could bring more comprehensive competitive performance score than the same marginal rise of scale performance score.(3) The competitiveness of China's indigenous high-technology industry was still weak,but the efficiency performance of China's indigenous high-technology industry was higher than that of the foreign-funded enterprises in China.(4) The efficiency performance of the foreign-funded enterprises in China was low,because their performance was skewed towards scale.The growth of scale performance of China's high-technology industry since 2000 had been driven by the foreign-funded enterprises in China.(5) The comprehensive competitiveness of the driving factors of China's high-technology industry was severely poor,and its construction was unbalanced.Only production elements and domestic market demand showed some advantage,but the other factors were very poor.(6) As to the functional mechanism between driving factors and performance,China's high-technology industry showed some deviations from the common trend of the other countries' high-technology industry.(7) From an input-output perspective,the input of driving factors showed some inefficiency to the output of competitive performance,so China's driving factors must seek for lean, intensive growth and co-evolution mechanism.(8) Together with the tremendous expansion of the scale performance of computers and office equipments manufacturing,the efficiency performance slipped down,so China's computers and office equipments manufacturing must adjust its strategies to raise the labor productivity,the value added ratio and profit rate.The scale performance of China's aircraft and spacecraft manufacturing lagged far behind the efficiency performance,so China's aircraft and spacecraft manufacturing should carry out scale priority strategy to expand its production and market share.Based on the evaluation conclusions,the dissertation puts forward the following suggestions on the competitiveness upgrading of China's high-technology industry:(1) Carrying out strategic transformation.General competitive performance strategy should turn to efficiency in priority,and giving consideration to keep balance.China's introducing foreign direct investment strategy should turn to technology and efficiency in priority.(2) Together adjusting the role of government, social institutes and enterprises.(3) Reinforcing technology innovation;and promoting the upgrade of technology elements;enhancing the introduction and absorption of foreign technology;increasing the funding in technology innovation; improving the level of technology innovation;improving the cooperative innovation system among industry,universities and research institutes.(4) Enlarging the demand scale of high-technology products;raising the level of demand sophistication.(5) Normalizing the competitive structure;transforming enterprise strategies.(6) Reconstructing the industrial networks.(7) Improving infrastructures. (8) Carrying out policy innovation.