S&T Policy And Spatial Structure Of Industrial R&D Of China

Among all the major players of state innovation system, enterprise is the most important one. Also, as part of the regional innovation environment, the R&D capacity is foundation of the technology innovation for nation. Compared with the developed countries, industrial R&D of China is still young, which is developed along with the Chinese Economic Reform. The science and technology business experienced a rapid growing period since 1985, by now China has become the 4th biggest country when measured by R&D expenditure. However, when considering the technology innovation capacity of enterprises, the gap between China and the developed countries is still wide. Chinese enterprises is far behind the developed countries when measuring with index such as ratio of R&D expense to revenue , percentage of enterprises with R&D activity and percentage of enterprises owning patents. Now the Chinese government is implementing the strategy of building an innovation-oriented country, which made is urgent to strengthen the R&D capacity of Chinese enterprises in no time. The existing theoretical research and empirical practice has proved that enterprises under market system can’t provide enough innovation that fulfills the need of society. It’s necessary to implement proper policy to modify the system failure so as to realize the optical innovation activities.To begin with, this paper fist draw a clue for the development of the S&T policy and the industrial R&D, and then give the outline of the present status of industrial R&D. Based on the patent data, the study examines the geography of innovations of mainland China from1988 to 2008 with GIS method. It shows that the innovation potential of China has changed dramatically from several-innovating-pole mode to coasted-innovating-zone mode during the period of 1988~2008, while the gap between more innovative regions and less innovation regions is widening. Selected census index is used to form the variety matrix. Factor analysis is used to identify the socio-economic characteristics that correlated most with regional innovation capacity. Based on the cluster result, all the provinces of mainland China are divided into four groups that reveal the industrial R&D spatial structure. Consistency is found existing between the industrial R&D spatial structure and the regional economy structure, both shows a declining from coasted area to western area.Multiple regression is used to find the mechanism how S&T policy effects the spatial structure of industrial R&D, while patent data by province is the dependent variables and selected census data as independent variables. Variables that reflect different ownership of industrial is concluded so as to exam the effect of ownership to innovation activity.In the last part, according to the conclusions of analysis stated above, the author give out some suggestions for S&T policy making which focus on strengthen the industrial R&D capacity of China.