The Relations Between The Innovation Capability Of National High-tech Parks In The West Of China And Regional Economic Development

Since China began to establish high-tech parks in the southeast coast in the1980s, the State Council has approved the establishment of54national high and new technology industry development zones (abbreviated high-tech parks) by the end of2000. Up till now, the number of state-level high-tech parks is more than eighty, including13provincial high-tech parks upgraded as national ones in2010. After20years of development, these parks have played a great role in the regional economic development, especially in the export-oriented economy of the eastern coastal regions. Nevertheless, the western regions have rich human resources and natural resources. Many of them also have strong industrial and economic basis. With the implementation of national strategy " develop the West " in1999, the West has attracted more attention at home and abroad and it is also seen as the China’s future growth engine. The western regions have traditional manufacturing industries, such as clothes, shoes, furniture and so on. They also have high and new technology industries, such as information, medicine, electronics, biology etc. Due to the increasing costs of real estate and manpower in the eastern coast, part of the traditional and high-tech industries are transferring to the West gradually. The high-tech parks play an important in the development of high-tech industry. There is much research on high-tech parks at home and abroad, but mostly focused on the development models, operation and effective management of high-tech parks. However, the study on national high-tech parks in the west of China has mentioned but very few. This paper will fill up the gap and focus on generating not only evaluation criteria of the innovation capability of high-tech parks, but also evaluation criteria of regional economy development, and then use the relevant statistical software to discuss the relationship between innovation capability and regional economic development.Innovation is the key mission of high-tech parks. Therefore, whether the innovation capability of a park is strong or weak reflects the development state of the park directly. This paper discusses the relationship between the innovation ability and the regional economic development. As China has many high-tech parks and national high-tech parks are good representatives of these parks as well as our available data, we limit our research on national high-tech parks in the west of China. The existing literature on high-tech parks is mainly toward the general analysis and evaluation. This paper conducts a study on state-level high-tech parks in the China’s western region and also uses the growth pole theory in the western areas. With the implementation of "developing the West" strategy, the research on the western regions is meaningful. The main novelty of this paper lies on the analysis of the relationship between the innovation capability of high-tech parks in the West and the regional economic development which does not exist in the previous literature. The second novelty of this paper is the design of evaluation criteria for innovation capability of high-tech parks and regional economy development. The third novelty of paper is to take industrial agglomeration into research consideration, as the linkage between regional economic development and industrial cluster is very close.Based on the previous research of high-tech parks, this paper employs growth pole theory, incubator theory and Triple Helix theory to conduct our research. The growth pole theory views high-tech parks as a growth pole and shows that parks can influence regional economic development which is likely to be positive or is not significant. The incubator theory regards high-tech parks as an external environment for firm incubation. Parks provide all kinds of favorable conditions to firms and help them grow. Triple Helix theory is about the interactions between government, universities and industry. Government, universities and industry are the three factors of innovation environment in the knowledge-based society. Their interactions can promote innovation capability of high-tech parks and the economic development of the region.The main body of this dissertation is divided into five parts. The first part is introduction, including research questions and research background, purpose, significance of novelty and framework of this dissertation. The second part is related to literature review about high-tech parks, including categories, history and development of high-tech parks also summarizing innovation capability of high-tech parks and regional economic development researched by domestic and foreign scholars. The third part embeds the conceptual model, the scope of the study and theoretical assumptions. The fourth part is the key part of the study which is about data collection, data analysis and hypothesis testing. The fifth also the final part of the study is conclusions and recommendations for how to accelerate the development of the high-tech parks and the western regions in China.