| The different directions of technological progress will help determine the structure of a country’s comparative advantage and inter-country differences in long-term economic growth. This view has been widely accepted by theorists. Thus the impact of intellectual property protection on the direction of technological progress is a crucial research. However, under the North-South framework, the literature about intellectual property protection includes more or less implicit assumption that non-competitive differences of intellectual capital do not exist, which is that the dependence of all types of new technologies on intellectual property protection is the same. Thus the literature about the intellectual property protection in developing countries focused on the effect of strengthening intellectual property protection and economic, technology transfer or the amount of innovation, but ignore the effect of intellectual property protection on technology choice and direction of technological progress. On the other hand, intellectual property protection can contribute to the increase in innovation activities, but at the same time it will also restrict the use of non-competition resources. The two sides of intellectual property protection make its impact on technological progress in developing countries must rely on empirical evidence to determine. In the absence of empirical evidence, and in the background which the international mainstream view is that strict intellectual property protection would undermine the interests of developing countries, as a developing major economy, in the context of involving into the TRIPS, which is the global system of intellectual property protection, does the more and more strict protection system promote or ease the country’s economic development and technological progress? Accordingly, based on the results of previous studies, this paper studies the related issues with intellectual property protection and technological progress of China from the theoretical and empirical aspects, by means of mainstream economic theory such as growth theory, and other econometric analysis of modern methods. At last, according to the study, propose policy recommendations how to promote industrial upgrading and transformation and to achieve coordinated economic development of all regions by improving intellectual property protection.From the hypothesis of the theoretical framework, this paper introduces the knowledge’s non-exclusive features (imitability) to analytical framework, assuming that there are two properties of intellectual capital, non-exclusive knowledge capital and exclusive intellectual capital. Following the model of endogenous technological progress as the basic analytical framework, through the expanded research of the R&D department in the three-department decentralized economy, this paper analyzes the internal mechanism through whidh the strengthening of intellectual property protection will encourage access to non-exclusive technology and thus affect the technology choice and direction of technological. Focus on the important mechanism that intellectual property protection is mainly through the intermediary-technical progress to indirectly promote economic growth, and propose the following technical route of study:intellectual property protection-the direction of technological progress-the total technological progress, economic growth and regional differences.The empirical research based on China industry data showed that:After strengthening patent protection, the foreign enterprises has greatly increased the transfer the high-tech industry to Chinese patent, the high-tech industry investment in fixed assets also increased, while the number of the patent applications and investment in fixed assets of low-tech industries were not obvious or even less, funded enterprises increased more R&D investment in the high-tech industry, patent applications were high-tech industry concentrated. Accordingly, we draw a basic conclusion:strengthening intellectual property protection made the direction of China’s technical progress shift to high-tech industry. The empirical results based on Chinese provincial data showed that:with implementation of two of the Patent Law in1993and2001, the growth of both China’s fixed asset investment and TFP was accelerating significantly and substantially, and this acceleration is considering the effect of the "Deng Xiaoping’s southern tour" and "China’s accession to WTO". Despite the prevailing view remains that the technological progress of China, a developing country with less original innovation will be hindered. The second basic conclusion showed that:China’s technological progress and economic growth was not mitigated by strengthening IPR protection, but Chinese technology and TFP was substantially improved by strengthening protection of intellectual property. However, the provinces of the high-tech industry gain more from the patent law, and these high-tech provinces are also economic developed ones. Although from a long-term point of view, intellectual property protection is beneficial to the spread of technology, the third basic conclusion showed:the strengthening of IPR protection in China has helped in the short term to expand the existing technology gap between regions.As developing countries maintaining not strict intellectual property protection is still the mainstream thinking, and the policy basis is lack of empirical support. Therefore, China has been remaining relatively weak intellectual property protection. Weak protection of intellectual property poses a serious policy dilemma, which makes China face enormous international pressure, and face the policy risk of having hampered domestic development, limited international technology transfer, and even hampered the domestic industry upgrading.Finally, based on the theoretical analysis and empirical conclusions, some corresponding policies are recommended. It’s suggested that more attention and importance be paid and attached to the intellectual property protection, and the law enforcement should obey the rules of international property, build integrity of the human environment, gradually build a comprehensive and integrated intellectual property protection system, which will make many policy dilemma solved. In addition, it’s an important way to establish more detailed terms of intellectual property protection according to the characteristics of the development of various industries for integrating patent policy, industrial upgrading and transfer policies. To implement different R&D subsidy policies and promote the human capital accumulation in a unified framework of intellectual property rights protection will help alleviate in short term the regional technology gap and regional uneven economic development caused by intellectual property protection policies. |
