Research On The Impact Of The Upgrading Of China’s Human Capital Structure On Regional Innovation Capability

The report of the 19 th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 2017 pointed out that “socialism with Chinese characteristics has entered a new era”,and the Chinese economy has officially shifted from high-speed growth to a stage of highquality development.As the source of economic growth,technological innovation is the first driving force for development.Relying on technological innovation to create a new engine for economic development and to cultivate new kinetic energy for economic growth is the core connotation of the innovation-driven development strategy.The reality that China is currently facing is that the level of technological development is generally not high,and the contribution rate of technology to economic growth is still far behind that of developed countries.The country’s weak innovation capability has become the "Achilles heel" of China’s economic and social development.Innovation is the first driving force to lead development,and talents are the first resource to support development.China’s current economic innovation-driven development is facing the embarrassing situation of a continuous decline in the total labor force and a shortage of structurally high-quality human capital.Promoting the transition,adjustment and upgrading of human capital structure from "low-level human capital-led type" to "highlevel human capital-led type" may be an important human capital deepening path for China to build an innovative country.In this context,the research and exploration of issues related to the upgrading of human capital structure and regional innovation capabilities will undoubtedly have important theoretical significance and practical value for promoting the high-quality development of China’s economy.Based on the above realistic background,the paper focuses on the core issue of the relationship between human capital structure upgrading and regional innovation capability.The main contents of the research lie in the following four aspects: First,quantitatively measure the level of human capital structure upgrading in different regions of China,and use statistical deconstruction methods to reveal the temporal and spatial evolution of China’s human capital structure upgrading on the basis of summarizing relevant basic typical facts and characteristics.Second,from the perspective of regional patent value,it conducts a quantitative statistical analysis on the typical factual characteristics and temporal and spatial evolution of China’s regional innovation capabilities.The third is to theoretically explain the empirical phenomenon that the evolution characteristics and development laws of China’s human capital structure upgrade and regional innovation capabilities are highly overlapping in time and space,and empirically test it.Fourth,based on the reality of China,market-oriented reform and opening to the outside world are regarded as macro-institutional environment change factors with Chinese characteristics,and theoretically and empirically,the institutional environment boundary conditions that may exist in the upgrading of human capital structure affecting regional innovation capabilities are systematically analyzed.According to the above research content,the main research conclusions of the paper are as follows:(1)The human capital structure upgrade index based on independent calculations shows that from 2002 to 2018,China’s human capital structure as a whole showed a trend of optimization and upgrading from a “low-level human capital-led type” to a “highlevel human capital-led type”.The upgrading of human capital structure at the level of the three major geographic regions(East,Central,and West)has a significant gradient effect.Further statistical analysis of the characteristics of temporal and spatial evolution shows that there is polarization in the upgrading and development of the human capital structure in China,and the polarization characteristics of different geographic regions show obvious heterogeneity.During the observation period,the overall difference in the upgrading of the human capital structure in each region has expanded by about 33%.The inter-regional difference is the most important contributor,followed by the intra-regional difference,and the contribution of hypervariable density is the smallest.The overall upgrade of human capital structure in China does not have the σ convergence feature,but basically supports the β convergence mechanism,and there are certain differences in the convergence characteristics of different geographic regions.The upgrading of China’s human capital structure also shows a relatively stable "high-high" or "low-low" geographic spatial agglomeration.(2)Using the regional innovation index obtained based on the patent value update model shows that China’s regional innovation capabilities continued to increase from2002 to 2016.The eastern geographic region has the strongest innovation capability,followed by the central region,and finally the western region.Regional innovation capabilities show a clear gradient effect in terms of geographic spatial distribution.A statistical analysis of the temporal and spatial evolution characteristics of China’s regional innovation capabilities shows that there is a certain polarization trend in the distribution of China’s regional innovation capabilities,and there are certain differences in the polarization characteristics of different geographic regions.The overall difference in innovation capabilities in different regions of China has expanded by about 26%compared to the initial period of observation.Among them,inter-regional differences contribute the most,followed by intra-regional differences,and hypervariable density contributes the least.The convergence characteristics of the evolution of China’s regional innovation capabilities do not support the σ convergence hypothesis,but there is an obvious β convergence mechanism.At the level of the three major geographic regions,the σ convergence characteristics of regional innovation capabilities are weakly supported in the eastern region,and other regions show obvious divergence.The β convergence mechanism is basically supported in the east and west,while the β convergence feature in the middle is not obvious.Regional innovation capability has significant spatial heterogeneity in geographic location,and the characteristics of geographic spatial agglomeration have a further strengthening trend in the time dimension.(3)The upgrading of human capital structure helps to enhance regional innovation capabilities.The upgrading of human capital structure mainly enhances regional innovation capabilities through channels such as "talent accumulation effect","innovation output effect" and "innovation driving effect".The effect of the upgrading of the human capital structure on regional innovation capabilities is significantly different due to the impact of the financial crisis and geographic location.Based on the panel data of 287 cities in China from 2003 to 2016,the panel econometric model research found that the upgrading of human capital structure has significantly enhanced regional innovation capabilities.On average,for every 1 standard deviation of the upgrading of human capital structure,the regional innovation capability will increase by approximately0.1972 standard deviations.The above conclusions are still valid after a series of robustness tests and a causal analysis framework that considers contemporaneous reverse causality,missing variables,unobservable factors,measurement errors and other endogenous issues.Further use of econometric methods for estimation of instrumental variables confirms that the upgrading of human capital structure has a significant positive role in promoting the number of innovative talents in the region,per capita patent output,and the scale of high-tech industry development.This shows that the "talent accumulation effect","innovation output effect" and "innovation driving effect" played by the upgrading of the human capital structure are important causal channels for enhancing regional innovation capabilities.The analysis of heterogeneity shows that the 2008 global financial crisis significantly weakened the effect of the upgrading of the human capital structure on regional innovation capabilities.In terms of regional differences,the effect of the upgrading of the human capital structure on regional innovation capabilities has gradually weakened from the east to the central and western regions.This means that the unbalanced differentiation of human capital structure between regions may further widen the gap in innovation capabilities between regions,which leads to further aggravation of regional economic unbalanced development.(4)The two types of institutional environmental factors,the degree of marketization and the level of opening to the outside world,are the significant boundary conditions that restrict the impact of human capital structure upgrading on regional innovation capability.Improving the degree of marketization and expanding the level of opening to the outside world can help strengthen the promotion effect of human capital structure upgrading on regional innovation capability.Based on the panel data of Chinese cities from 2003 to2016,this paper constructs an econometric model of interaction,and empirically examines the possible effects of two institutional environmental factors,namely,the degree of marketization and the opening up,on the upgrading of human capital structure from the perspective of regional innovation capability by using the fixed effect and instrumental variable estimation methods.The study found that improving the institutional environment can effectively amplify the effect of the upgrading of the human capital structure on regional innovation capabilities,that is,increasing the degree of domestic marketization and expanding the level of international opening to the outside world can help strengthen the upgrading of the human capital structure to enhance regional innovation capabilities.Further analysis of the marginal effect found that with the improvement of the degree of marketization and its various aspects and the improvement of the level of opening to the outside world and its different aspects,the marginal effect of the upgrading of the human capital structure on regional innovation capabilities has gradually increased.At the same time,the study found that only after marketization and opening to the outside world reach a certain level,the upgrading of human capital structure will have a significant positive marginal effect on regional innovation capabilities.Based on the above research conclusions,the possible policy enlightenment directions of this article lie in the following four aspects: One is to optimize the structure of human capital as the focus to alleviate regional imbalances and inadequate contradictions.The second is to strengthen regional innovation capabilities as the goal to help coordinate and high-quality development of the regional economy.The third is to promote the upgrading of human capital structure and build an endogenous dynamic mechanism for strengthening regional innovation capabilities.The fourth is to optimize the market environment for innovation-driven development to fully release the institutional dividends of reform and opening up.