Technological diversification in China: Based on Chinese patent analysis during 1986-2011

Lutao Ning (), Martha Prevezer and Yuandi Wang

No 55, Working Papers from Queen Mary, University of London, School of Business and Management, Centre for Globalisation Research

Abstract: This paper confirms the positive relationship between national technological size and technological diversification (following Cantwell, Vertova 2004 for major developed economies) for China over three periods: from its premarket status 1986-1990, through its rapid marketization of 1991-2000, to its globalization phase from 2001-2011. The Chinese technological trajectory differs from the earlier developed world model significantly in tending to greater technological specialization from the outset of technological growth in the 1990s. We analyse a dataset of 3.7 million Chinese patents at the SIPO, Chinese patent office. Using shift-share analysis, we decompose changes in the relationship between technological size and diversification into those attributable to the increase in size (number of patents, population, GDP) and those attributable to the structural shift towards diversification or specialization between technological fields. We find that although the positive relation between size and diversification holds over all three periods, there is a structural shift between each period towards greater technological specialization. We argue that this mirrors the ‘globalizing’ FDI-driven shift that occurred in the US towards technological specialization between 1965 and 1990 (Cantwell and Vertova 2004). In China this represents a shift away from traditional fields such as consumer goods and equipment or transportation towards electronics and computing fields.

Keywords: technological diversification and specialization; patents; China; R&D investment structure; size-diversification relationship (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O1 O3 O5 P5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ino, nep-ipr, nep-pr~, nep-tid and nep-tra
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