China innovation drive defies conventional wisdom

China innovation drive defies conventional wisdom

WASHINGTON – The widely held view in the West is that the centers of Chinese innovation can be found in Beijing, with its government largesse and tightly integrated university system, and Shanghai, with its gleaming towers and far-flung industrial parks.

The conventional wisdom has it that the Pearl River Delta that includes the booming city of Shenzhen and surrounding Guangdong province is nothing more than China’s sweatshop.

That view is precisely backwards, argues America’s foremost scholar on Chinese innovation policy, Dan Breznitz of Georgia Tech’s Sam Nunn School of International Affairs. Breznitz, the co-author of a landmark 2011 book, “Run of the Red Queen: Government, Innovation, Globalization and Economic Growth in China,” was one of the first western thinkers to probe the inner workings of China’s evolving approach to innovation and what it means for the global economy.

The book’s thesis is that in a world of globally fragmented production, “China does not need to master breakthrough innovations to achieve success.” Instead, like the Red Queen from Lewis Carroll’s “Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There,” China needs only to keep pace with technological innovations elsewhere, then master later stages of innovation.

Therefore, China’s vaunted “indigenous innovation” campaign is really “second-generation innovation,” Breznitz argues.



TAG:Run of the Red Queen Dan Breznitz China Innovation Shenzhen Breznitz