Greater China's Quest for Innovation

Will China come to dominate global high-tech innovation? In the future, perhaps. Today, however, Greater China—Mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong—is focused on the quest for innovation. The dominant paradigm on the Mainland is one of execution, not innovation. Beijing now aims to turn China—historically an adopter of technologies from elsewhere—into a major technology creator. Self-reliance has become the government's watchword and its ultimate goal. The talents and resources available are impressive. More Chinese young people are well-educated, international patents and research and development (R&D) spending are on the rise, and China boasts a growing presence in world scientific literature. Still, negatives remain. China must overcome the legacies of a top-down, state-run research system that is largely disconnected from commerce, and an academic system not always supportive of independent scholarly inquiry. The government is working to change these outdated institutions, but such shifts do not occur overnight. Taiwan and Hong Kong have followed different paths to high-tech innovation. Taiwan's route has been dominated by government but implemented by mostly small- and medium-sized firms, with help from its Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), a model for moving concepts to commerce. Significantly, Taiwan's companies maintain strong links to multinational firms both in the United States and in Mainland China. Taiwan's Hsinchu Science-based Park is seen as a model high-tech cluster throughout Asia and beyond. Hong Kong has taken another road. While its formal R&D activity is small, it innovates in business models, particularly in logistics chains that reach into the Mainland and globally. It is a (largely unheralded) story of great success. The big question is: When will Greater China's high-tech innovation have a major impact on the world economy?

Henry S. Rowen is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, a professor of Public Policy and Management emeritus at the Graduate School of Business, and a senior fellow emeritus of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, all at Stanford University. Rowen is an expert on international security, economic development, and high-tech industries in the United States and Asia. His current research focuses on the rise of Asia in high technologies.

Marguerite Gong Hancock is the associate director of the Stanford Program on Regions of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SPRIE). For SPRIE, she manages project research, conferences and seminars, publications, and oversees the project’s affiliated academic and government research partners in six countries in Asia. She leads SPRIE’s China team, guiding research on high-tech regions, case studies of information technology companies, and new work on the globalization of research and development and high-tech leadership in Greater China.

William F. Miller has spent about half of his professional life in business and about half in academia. He was the last faculty member recruited to Stanford University by the legendary Frederick Terman, who was then vice president and provost of Stanford. Miller himself later became vice president and provost of Stanford. He conducted research and directed many graduate students in computer science.