Description
In order to facilitate long-term domestic technological progress and pursue advantages in the global strategic competition surrounding the development of key technologies, China mobilises enormous financial resources to stimulate domestic actors’ participation in the global technology innovation system (GTIS). More specifically, Beijing supports exports and imports of high-tech goods and services, sponsors cross-border investment in technology, accommodates cross-border R&D collaboration, and facilitates high-level international collaboration in scientific research. These measures are typical approaches of economic statecraft. However, whereas the concept of economic statecraft helps reveal China’s objectives and tools for strengthening its role in the GTIS, it does not explain adequately the inconsistent consequences of the deployment of each measure.
This paper seeks to establish an analytical framework of China’s outward-looking tech policies that connects better its ever-growing strategic ambition and state capacity to the recent overseas defeats experienced by various Chinese actors in the GTIS. It analyses a comprehensive set of China’s innovation records and data of China’s overseas high-tech trade and investment. It shows that the complications of China’s overseas technology innovation activities are derived from both flaws in the domestic high-tech sector and the evolving geopolitical tensions between China and its competitors. As the Chinese state capacity and geopolitical influence grow, its overseas technology innovation activities are perceived increasingly as threats to its competitors, which in turn create obstacles for Chinese actors’ participation in the GTIS. This dynamic link between China’s tech policies and geopolitical position is increasingly shaped by the distrust between Beijing and its competitors.
