Indigenous Innovation in China - an empirical analysis of the machinery and equipment industry in Lingang (YRD) and Shunde (PRD)

在实行以出口和外国直接投资（FDI）为基础的增长模式的30年里，中国已成为世界上最大的工业品生产国之一。中国希望世界市场一体化和外国直接投资将导致大量知识流入，并最终导致中国制造的创新。然而，中国企业受益于知识流入和技术升级，但真正的创新仍然是一个罕见的例外。因此，中国政府开始强调自主创新的必要性，自主创新应该独立于外国公司，以国内研发活动为基础，关注国内市场，并得到政府的支持。从经济地理学的角度来看，很明显，中国只有少数地区拥有必要的技术先进的公司，支持教育和研究机构，以及运作良好的公共管理，以实现自主创新。这些地区是首都北京，包括上海在内的长江三角洲（YRD）和珠江三角洲（PRD）。围绕自主创新话题的学术辩论突出了两个问题。首先，目前尚不清楚，对自主创新的关注能在多大程度上支持成功的增长模式。其次，区域经济结构和环境在支持自主创新方面的作用存在争议。本研究项目希望对两个城市的机械设备公司进行比较研究，以便对这些问题进行更有经验的讨论。在这方面，机械和设备工业是一个非常合适的例子，因为它具有以下特点：外国直接投资在这一领域的重要性相对较小，而且由于技术原因，生产过程的特点是纵向解体程度较低。因此，全球生产网络在这个行业中并不占主导地位，国家对个别公司的支持，例如以投资激励的形式，发挥着更大的作用。从德国的角度来看，中国企业在该领域的一些细分领域越来越成为强有力的竞争对手。案例研究区域将是位于长三角的临港和位于珠三角的顺德两个城市，前者的特点是政府支持和靠近公共研发机构，后者的特点是私营企业和高度关注国内市场。

Within three decades of applying a growth model based on exports and foreign direct investment (FDI), China has become one of the worlds largest producers of industrial goods. The country hoped that world market integration and FDI would lead to substantial knowledge inflow and eventually result in innovation made in China. However, Chinas firms have benefitted from knowledge inflow and technical upgrading, but true innovations remain a rare exception. Hence, the Chinese government has started stressing the need for indigenous innovation (zizhu chuangxin), that should emerge independent from foreign companies, based on domestic R&D activities, focused on the domestic market, and supported by the government. From the angle of economic geography it seems clear that only a few regions within China possess the necessary concentration of technically advanced companies, supporting education and research organization, and well-functioning public administration to allow for indigenous innovation to materialize. These regions are the capital region Beijing, the Yangtze river delta (YRD) including Shanghai, and the Pearl river delta (PRD). The academic debate around the topic of indigenous innovation highlights two questions. First, it is not clear, to what degree a focus on indigenous innovation can support a successful growth model. Secondly, the role of regional economic structures and environments for supporting indigenous innovation is under debate. This research project wants to carry out comparative research on machinery and equipment companies in two cities in order to contribute to an empirically more informed discussion of these questions. The machinery and equipment industry is a wellsuited example in this con-text because of the following features: FDI is of relatively minor importance in this field, and for technical reasons the production process is marked by a low degree of vertical disintegration. Thus, global production networks do not dominate in this industry, and state support for individual companies, e. g. in form of investment incentives, play a larger role. From the German perspective, Chinese companies more and more become serious competitors in some sub-sectors of the field. The case study regions will be the two cities of Lingang located in the YRD, characterized by government support and proximity to public R&D organizations and Shhunde located in the PRD, and characterized by privately owned companies and a strong focus on the domestic market.