The Fifth Plenum of the 19th Central Committee of the CCP emphasized the role of science, technology and innovation (STI) as the country’s driving forces on the path to achieving socialist modernization by 2035. In light of the escalating relevance bestowed to STI areas, this essay examines the gradual yet steady establishment, through a trial-and-error approach, of a national innovation system (NIS) in China. Adopting the analytical tools offered by the NIS theory, the article highlights the key principles and critical turning points in the country’s STI policy since the inception of the economic reforms. Whereas mainstream reports on China’s progress in the STI areas ascribe its success mainly to heavy State-led investments in science and technology, this essay acknowledges the attention accorded to the coordination of innovative actors and the circulation of knowledge, skills, and ideas. When looking at the present and future developments, four areas of attention are highlighted: the updated definition of new emerging industries, the growing importance of regional clustering, an ongoing infrastructural upgrade, and the strategic relevance of technology standardization. Significant obstacles to continued progress in the STI areas are also identified. First of all, the incentives structure is still too disconnected from qualitative criteria. Secondly, the growing atrophy of China’s long-standing institutional flexibility is endangering a model that, thus far, has enabled its extraordinary progress in science and technology. 

China’s space industry is currently undergoing profound transformations, steered by the country’s deep-rooted resolve to become a technologically innovative powerhouse. The space sector has indeed become one of the busiest laboratories in which new models of innovation and industrial paradigms are being tested. A more dynamic and commercially driven approach to space has emerged in the process, characterized by new entrants and ambitious undertakings aimed at capturing space markets with innovative business approaches. In this new ecosystem, private actors have started to play a more prominent role, with dozens of entrepreneurs each year kick-starting space ventures to market innovative solutions at both ends of the sector’s value-chain and promising to disrupt the way space activities are conducted in China. Against this background, the article provides an assessment of the current policies and instruments deployed by the Chinese government to harness technological innovation and steer industrial development in the space sector. It reviews the main elements of continuity and change with previous policies, placing a particular emphasis on the government’s efforts to attain truly independent innovations, ensure a coordinated development of national space activities and foster a double integration between civil-military and public-private stakeholders’ undertakings. In doing so, the article also offers a comprehensive mapping of the new ecosystem that emerged out of these policies, shedding light on both its structural limits and its potential for growth and influence on the international space economy.

The article aims to show that both top-down and bottom-up perspectives are relevant to understanding innovative trends in Chinese capitalism. Top-down innovation concerns formal institutions and the institutional environment, while bottom-up innovation concerns society’s micro-activism in the economic sphere. Claiming that both types of innovation are to be found in China is not self-evident. In the public debate, an incomplete representation of the Chinese capitalism persists, as if it were a model following exclusively - or at least prevalently - the “low road”, thus exercising cost competition towards Western countries due to dirigiste choices. By contrast, it is a complex and strongly hybrid model. Coherently, the article will reconstruct how Chinese capitalism is forged by characteristic mixes of innovative and traditional elements, which offer hints for new research venues.

Over the last years, China has made substantial progress in greening its financial system. This has been carried out through a top-down governance model where political ambitions and commitments have been effectively translated into concrete policies and changes on the ground. The article accounts for how innovation has been a key component of these efforts across three aspects. First, at the central bank level, China has deployed innovative tools not seen anywhere before, such as including green factors in macroprudential regulation. Second, fintech has been applied in innovative ways, such as by banks using public environmental platforms as input for client credit assessment. Third, China has used green finance policies in various ways in different provinces as pilots and experiments before rolling out policies at the national level. From an EU perspective, the article finds that Chinese green finance efforts open the door for collaboration in terms of participation in each other’s financial markets, joint efforts in third countries, as well as coordination of Covid-19 recovery efforts.

The article describes the policy context of the EU-China research and innovation collaboration with a focus on the last two decades, and outlines its long-standing challenges as well as most recent issues. It analyses several examples of good practice from European organisations which created innovative approaches towards their activities in China. Despite the ongoing debate across Europe how to rebalance the relationship, cooperation with the world’s second biggest research & development funder is unlikely to decrease. However, the past achievements and failures have formed neither a base for a Europe-wide understanding of the complexities of China’s environment, nor platforms for proper utilisations of Europe’s domestic expertise on China. As a result, the potential to create a balanced relationship in research, innovation and higher education remains untapped.

The 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake preluded to China’s new era of social innovations, which, under the radar, has been robustly driven by philanthropy since 2009. This new undervalued driver not only led to a series of key legal reforms to empower and guide philanthropy in China, especially the promulgation of the first-ever Philanthropy Law in 2016, but also triggered profound adjustments and innovations among all sectors in China: the structural realignment in the government, the practice of corporate social responsibility, social enterprise and impact investing in business, and the adoption of crowdfunding, charitable trust and public interest capitalism in philanthropic fundraising. Other innovations have been: the promotion of charitable prizes, the adoption of online technologies, increased number of volunteers, and new international cooperation in philanthropic projects. Through philanthropy, social innovations have transformed China dramatically and inadvertently until the breakout of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. The effort to address the pandemic has demonstrated all the potential, capacities, and achievements developed within the philanthropy sector during a decade of quiet but rapid development. 

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Gli abstract sono disponibili soltanto per Articoli e Note di ricerca.

Gli abstract sono disponibili soltanto per Articoli e Note di ricerca.