Study On National Technological Catching-Up Path And Strategy

The Modern Western Civilization rise quickly since the Industrial Revolution and it has become an important strategy task for poor or lagged countries to catch-up with advanced countries.Economic catching-up is the focus of attention in catching-up literatures in early times;however the focus has gradually convert to technological catching-up since the 1980’s when Korea and Taiwan area quickly became members of developed countries club.Most of the research identified the concept of technological catching-up path by technological capability and pay attention to describe catching-up policy from specific country.Those research disregard provide general theoretical analysis framework,and there are few internal relations between technological catching-up path and technological catching-up strategy.This paper mainly studies how to describe and choice technological path and reveal relations between technological catching-up path and technological strategy.Theoretical analysis framework of technological catching-up path and strategy choice constructed in this paper is based on technological gap and institutional difference.There are four technological activities,they are technological imitation,technological transplantation,technological following and technological competition.Furthermore,can describe six typical technological paths based on the same framework.There are close internal ties between technological catching-up path and technological catching-up strategy.Six typical technological catching-up paths can be divided into four different types of technological strategy combined with relations of National Innovation System between catching-up countries and leading countries.They are technological following,technological embedding,technological confrontation and technological competition.Catching-up opportunity caused by technological revolution leading by advanced country may influence choice and realization of technological catching-up path and strategy from outside.Catching-up opportunity of cross paradigm is induced by technological revolution in the first,and then gradually convert to catching-up opportunity of inner paradigm.A catching-up country should need enough institutional innovation ability to grab catching-up opportunity of across paradigm,and enough favorable ability to carry out institutional change steadily to seize catching-up opportunity of inner paradigm.From inside Institutional change influence choice of technological catching-up path and strategy.There three types of institutional change tools namely independent institutional innovation,institutional transplantation and institutional transition.Institutional change is characterized by path dependence and institutional change cost may vary according to different catching-up country.Thus catching-up opportunity and institutional change tools choice influence catching-up performance together.Using per capita GDP gap and relative per capita GDP gap indicate technological gap and carry out multiple structural breakpoint test,empirical analysis is mainly based on per capita GDP from 1900 to 2010 obtained from the New Maddison Project Database.The test results show that there are much difference in choices of technological catching-up path and technological catching-up strategy between Germany,Japan,Korea,China,Taiwan area and India.Both Germany and Japan ever experienced strategy change form technological confrontation to technological following,Korea and Taiwan area all implement technological embedding strategy.In a long run,China’s technological catching-up strategy belong to technological competition,and India put into practice technological embedding mixed with technological competition.China’s technological catching-up path can be divided into five phases,namely pure technological transplantation,institutional conflict,construct independent technical system base,reopen the road of revival to technological superpower,and became a leading country in areas of complex technological product systems.Being a typical giant catching-up economy and as core country of Chinese civilization,target of China’s technological catching-up strategy is to development into one of leading technological countries.China can’t duplicate other countries’ policy experience of technological catching-up.Technological catching-up bears heavy responsibility of revival of Chinese civilization and China should adopt countermeasures as follows: maintaining political independence firmly and promote international status and influence continually;strengthen financial support to revival of Chinese civilization and cultural catching-up;shaping a friendly international technological catching-up rule system;insist on independent innovation strategy to enhance motive power of technological catching-up;pay close attention to trends of technological change so as to promote ability of seizing catching-up opportunity.The conclusions of this paper are as follows.First of all,there are great differences in experiences of technological catching-up between various countries since the Industrial Revolution,and each catching-up countries trend to choice technological-up path and strategy rationally according to concrete internal and external conditions.Secondly,choices of technological catching-up path and strategy for different countries may influence each other and there unneglectable competitive relation between different countries.There are strong competitiveness in technological catching-up at country level is an important reason for catching-up performance differences,and then decisions on technological catching-up path and strategy are based on competitiveness.Thirdly,technological catching-up bears heavy responsibility of revival of Chinese civilization and there is high continuity in China’s technological catching-up path and strategy choice in different period.China always persist firmly in becoming one of technological leading country as catching-up aim.Competitive catching-up strategy is an important common foundation for different catching-up phases ever experienced and in the future.The innovations of this paper are as follows.Firstly,the research provide a kind of catching-up path stage conversion mode from competitive view which play an important role in the catching-up procedure of giant catching-up economy.The common technological catching-up path phase conversion mode is shift to technological competition from technological transplantation for a giant catching-up economy,and this is a very different mode compare to the mode of shift from technological imitation to transition from imitation to innovation,and finally to innovation.The latter is a mode suitable for middle and small size catching-up economy and it can’t be able to apply for giant catching-up economy.Secondly,the paper understand and discuss the questions of catching-up path and strategy choice at country level by using two dimensional defining factors together.Most existing theories about technological catching-up at country level have constructed theoretical analysis frameworks based on single dimension of technological gap.However,this paper understand and discuss the questions of catching-up path and strategy choice at country level by tying two dimensions of technological gap and institutional difference together.It is necessary to add institutional difference factor into the framework,and this improvement can expand interpretation range and enhance ability of the theory constructed in this paper.Thirdly,the paper combined the method of multiple structural breakpoint test with comparative analysis in economic history in empirical analysis so that can identify catching-up stages of selecting countries by same criterion judgment,and results are consistent satisfactorily with the predictions from the theory constructed in this paper.