Does Innovation Capacity Building Help Regional Development? Policy Expert Narrations on Development in China’s “West”

Anna-Barbara Heindl

doi:10.1177/1868102621997984

Abstract

To avoid the middle-income trap, China’s leaders call for innovation to accelerate development in China. However, since it is not clear how innovation and (regional) development reinforce each other, there is no blueprint strategy for successful innovation capacity building throughout China. Due to resource scarcity in its “Western” regions, it is thus far from certain that innovation capacity building will support regional development. Departing from sociology of knowledge, narrations are constitutive of policy practice. This article analyses narrative patterns of policy experts to understand how innovation capacity building and regional development are negotiated in China’s lagging “West.” The comparison of Yunnan and Chongqing cases demonstrates that innovation capacity building is primarily infused with theoretical expectations: resource scarcity does not allow for grounding innovation as a strategy of regional development in the local context. This leads to narrations of “local” alternatives to innovation capacity building in centralist China.

Highlights

In 2014, China’s president Xi Jinping coined the expression “new normal” to describe China’s current and future slowed-down economic growth following the financial crisis
This article draws on interpretive analysis, a method that allows us to work out the discursive context between innovation as a factor in regional development in order to better understand rationales behind innovation policy-m aking and implementation in China’s less developed “West.” After introducing the research areas and the sample, I will place particular attention on the applied method of interpretive data analysis
The following presentation of results will focus on narrative patterns, which both Chongqing and Yunnan interviewees construct, on the relationship between innovation and regional development

Summary

Introduction

In 2014, China’s president Xi Jinping coined the expression “new normal” to describe China’s current and future slowed-down economic growth following the financial crisis. While in the past cheap labour force had been a successful driver of development, the “new normal” requires an increase in total factor productivity for more sustainable economic development. China’s leaders called for innovation to form the basis of economic development. Innovation is a novel product or novel process of economic production. The exclusivity that accompanies this novelty grants a competitive advantage on the market through increased returns. From the perspective of processes, these innovations emerge through interactive learning processes involving a variety of actors and the (re-)combination of their knowledge and resources (Moulaert and Sekia, 2003: 289)

Methods

Results

Conclusion