Research On The Evolution And Performance Of The Sectoral System Of Innovation Of China Automobile Industry

The automobile industry, which is characterized of high-integration level, strongcorrelation effects and complex technology requirement, is a typical pillar industry foran industrialized country. The development level and innovation capacity of automobileindustry usually can reflect the industrialized level and total innovation ability of anation. After the rapid development since Reform and Open, Chinese automobileindustry, whose abilities have been enhanced for all aspects, has been an important partof the global automobile industry. However, there is still large gap on the technologylevel and innovation capacity, compared with top automobile industry. Meanwhile, thenegative externality of the automobile industry has been emerging these years. Chineseautomobile industry needs change from “large” to “strong”. The theory of sectoralsystem of innovation (abbreviated to SSI), which birthed in1990s, absorbs the essenceof several antecedent theories, such as evolutionary economics, system theory andtheory of national system of innovation. The theory of SSI researches the industry froma multidimensional, integrated and dynamic view. After development for decades, SSIhas been a useful tool for industry research and development of new public policyindications.This article researches on the Chinese automobile industry from an SSI perspective.First, a framework of SSI suitable for China is built based on the SSI theory andindustry features of China. The analysis indicates that many elements, such asgovernment, domestic firms, MNCs and universities, play the different roles in the SSIof China. Second, this article focuses on the SSI of Chinese automobile industry,analyses the elements from the perspectives of features, functions and co-evolutions,and builds an SSI framework for the Chinese automobile industry. Third, this articlediscusses the quantitative evaluation method of SSI. On the evaluation of systemefficiency, this article introduces a DEA model with weight restricted (C2R-AR model).On the evaluation of system performance, an evaluation index system is built forChinese automobile SSI based on the theory before. Besides that, this article alsoresearches on the DEA-Tobit regression method, which combines the efficiency evaluation and the performance evaluation. Last, this article evaluates the efficiency andthe performance of Chinese automobile SSI from2000-2010, and explains the resultsfrom an SSI perspective. The results indicates that the Chinese automobile SSIimproved greatly these11years, while there is still large gap compared with countrieswith top level automobile industry, such as Japan and Germany. The abilities of thedomestic firms, which are the core of SSI, are short. Moreover, the interaction betweenactors is inadequate, which restricts the systematic advantages.In sum, this article enriches the theory of SSI, as well provides a helpful exploration forthe application of SSI theory on industry of China.