Technology and Industrial Transformation of China (eBook)

Yanqing Jiang is now a Professor of Economics at the School of Economics and Finance, Shanghai International Studies University. His research has a central focus on China's opening up, growth and development. He started his research in this area in 2004 when he was affiliated to the Hanken School of Economics and the Helsinki Center of Economic Research as a doctoral researcher in Helsinki, Finland. His publications in this area include more than 50 published journal articles (all in English) and 10 published books (all in English) on China's opening up, growth, and development. 

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This book explores how China's industrial transformation and development depend on technology and innovation and how considerations about issues associated with technology and innovation may affect China's development strategies. Market-oriented reforms initiated four decades ago have constantly fueled a high speed of development in China. The country's industrial structure has experienced rapid evolution. In the meantime, especially in the general context of globalization, the country has also opened to foreign trade and foreign direct investment, transforming itself from a virtually completely closed economy into a major trading nation and the largest developing country destination for foreign direct investment in the world. Technology is thought to be one of the key driving forces that shape the transformation of the Chinese economy. Owing to different speeds of innovation and technology diffusion, uneven development is one major issue in the process of China's industrial transformation under new trends of globalization. Substantial disparities across different Chinese regions, e.g., the gaps in regional industrial development and those in incomes and living standards, have been one prominent feature of China and are (needless to say) closely related to different speeds of innovation and technology diffusion. The relationship between technology diffusion, innovation, and industrial development is an important yet complicated issue that deserves careful study. Considerations related to technology and innovation play a crucial role in leading and shaping China's development strategies and routes. Sustainable development of China creates strong pressures for continuous transforming, upgrading, and restructuring of the Chinese economy, and in all of these processes, innovation and technology diffusion play a fundamental role. The book presents to the interested reader facts, thoughts, models, empirical results, and discussions that shed light on those issues.