Transformative forces: how capital intensity and technological innovation shape digital evolution in Chinese enterprises

The integration of digital technologies is exhibiting an upward trend in Chinese enterprises, and the degree of corporate credit risk is directly proportional to their financial sustainability. Based on panel data of new energy enterprises from 2012 to 2020, this article makes an empirical study on the direct effect, mediating effect, and moderating effect of the digital economy (DE) on the new energy enterprises’ credit risk. It is found that the digital economy could significantly mitigate the credit risk of new energy enterprises by improving total factor productivity and amplifying the potential default cost. When the digital economy affects corporate credit risk, the development of the new energy industry acts as an intermediary, and knowledge spillover acts as a moderator. Furthermore, considering knowledge spillover as the threshold variable, the digital economy has a double-threshold effect. The marginal impact fluctuates from dropping to increasing as the knowledge spillover level increases. As for the region’s heterogeneity, the digital economy has benefited eastern China more than central and western China, possibly due to the differences in economic structure, capital intensity, and policy institutions. In view of these findings, this study provides a reference for China to mitigate corporate credit risk in the digital economy era.

PurposeThe study aims to analyze the role of the Made in China 2025 (MIC2025) initiative in China's Outward Foreign Direct Investment (OFDI) and the factors affecting the success or failure of Chinese enterprises' OFDI from the perspectives of the heterogeneity of home country enterprises.Design/methodology/approachBased on data on China's OFDI obtained from the China Global Investment Tracker (CGIT), the study uses the difference-in-differences model to analyze 2,670 completed OFDI deals and 211 failed OFDI deals by Chinese enterprises, from 2009 to 2018.FindingsThe study found that the effect of MIC2025 on Chinese enterprises' OFDI varies according to the ownership structure of the home country's enterprises. For successful OFDI, MIC2025 significantly impacted central state-owned enterprises (CSOEs), while it did not significantly influence local SOEs and privately owned enterprises. For failed OFDI, the MIC2025 plan only increased the failure of CSOEs' OFDI for the technology-seeking motivation in high-income host countries. Further, the investment options of local SOEs differ from those of CSOEs. Considering their aim to drive the local economy and seek profits, they are more similar to those of privately owned enterprises.Originality/valueThis study used a new database (i.e. the CGIT) to analyze Chinese enterprises' OFDI. It discussed the role of MIC2025 for different enterprises from the perspectives of successful and failed OFDI. It thus provided a new basis for analyzing policy affecting the OFDI of Chinese enterprises.

Present-day supply-side structural reform in China places an abundance of emphasis on environmental protection. In this paper, we re-measure the upstreamness of Chinese enterprises in global value chains as described by Ni Hongfu (2022). Subsequently, the impact of environmental regulations on the global value chain position of Chinese firms is studied in depth, using the cleaner production standards promulgated and implemented by the Chinese government in 2003 as a quasi-natural experiment, taking a time-varying difference-in-differences (DID) approach. The data sources employed include the Cleaner Production Standard Implementation Industry Directory, the World Input–Output Database (WIOD), the China Industrial Enterprise Database, and the China Customs Import and Export Database. This research discovered the following: First, adopting cleaner production standards significantly improves Chinese enterprises’ positions in the global value chain—a conclusion that holds up to a number of robustness tests. Second, in terms of firm size, capital intensity, ownership characteristics, and government subsidies, there exists a noticeable heterogeneity in the promotion of the adoption of cleaner production standards for the improvement of Chinese enterprises’ global value chain position. Third, the implementation of cleaner production standards stimulates the upgrading of Chinese enterprises’ global value chain position, primarily through the entry and exit impacts, product-switching effect, and innovation compensation effect. The following proposals for policy can be implemented in light of the findings of this paper: “upstream prevention” strategies in the development of future environmental protection and trade policies should be advocated; nuanced and stratified environmental policies should be meticulously constructed; a mix of policies should be employed to bolster the institutional support for green environmental regulations; the integration of environmental governance into the evaluation framework should be emphasized; the creation of an innovation-oriented environmental governance system should be expedited. In conclusion, the findings of this research provide empirical evidence on the role of environmental regulations in coordinating ecological development and strengthening the position of Chinese enterprises in global value chains, which may assist other developing nations in making the transition to a path of high-quality growth.

This paper introduces the evolutionary process of technological innovation and technology management in Chinese enterprises since 1949. First, the transition of corporate management and technology management in China is introduced in comparison to Western-style management. Then, based on the historical description and case studies, the typical technology development process, especially the processes of technological acquisition, learning and secondary innovation in Chinese enterprises, is analyzed. The integration between technology acquisition and in-house design and R&D is emphasized. The authors suggest that "assimilation and self-design upon imported technology" (3-I policy) is the suitable and vital technology development avenue for most Chinese firms. To accomplish such a technological avenue, coordination, which exists between product innovation and process innovation, corporate strategy and technology strategy, and technology evolution and organizational change must be organized well and dynamically. As Chinese firms face more severe competition than ever, more attention should be paid to the development of indigenous capabilities for technological innovation. The firms' innovation system (FIS), which emphasizes the infrastructure support for a firms entrepreneurship, R&D system, and organization, as well as high-talent personnel, should be established or improved. Thus, technology strategy and the technological innovation system are currently the two key issues of management of technology (MOT) in China and will continue to be into the coming century.

Technological innovation is the source of power to enhance the core competitiveness and improve the survival and development of enterprises. In recent years, our government has encouraged enterprises to innovate and start businesses, vigorously advocating mass entrepreneurship and innovation”, and the vigor of innovation and entrepreneurship has burst out. A large number of high-tech enterprises have risen rapidly. To some extent, technological innovation has become a common choice for enterprises to survive and develop. However, while technological innovation enhances the competitiveness of enterprises, it also makes enterprises face the risk of market withdrawal. According to the statistics of the database of all state-owned enterprises and above-scale non-state-owned industrial enterprises of the National Bureau of Statistics, the average survival time of Chinese manufacturing enterprises was about 6.64 years from 1998 to 2011, with an average annual exit rate of 17%, and the average survival time of enterprises with scientific and technological innovation activities was about 6.82 years, of which nearly 50% of innovative enterprises were before entering the market. Within six years, less than 10% of innovative enterprises have survived for 10 years. The high market exit rate is a prominent problem faced by Chinese enterprises in the period of transition, and technological innovation affects the survival of enterprises through various channels. Therefore, it is an important research topic to reveal the mechanism of technological innovation affecting the survival of manufacturing enterprises and provide empirical evidence with Chinese characteristics.Based on the construction of a Schumpeterian competition and innovation theory model, this article incorporates the scale effect of R&D investment and market concentration into the analytical framework, selecting the Weibull survival risk model to empirically test the impact of technological innovation on the survival of start-ups by using the data of all state-owned enterprises and above-scale non-state-owned industrial enterprises of the National Bureau of Statistics. We find that there is an inverted U-shaped relationship of diminishing scale effects between R&D intensity and enterprise survival. Moreover, the impact of R&D intensity and market concentration on the survival of enterprises is complementary. Given the intensity of R&D, the survival time of enterprises is longer if it is in a more concentrated industry. Finally, the relationship between technological innovation and enterprise survival is also affected by the technical level of the industry and the ownership structure of enterprises. The survival risk rate of enterprises in the high-tech industry is lower, and the level of R&D of state-owned enterprises is higher, but the survival risk rate is higher than that of non-state-owned enterprises. These findings enrich the research on the relationship between technological innovation and enterprise survival, deepen our understanding of the impact of technological innovation on the survival of enterprises, and have theoretical and empirical implications for government policies.

In 2011—2013, China’s GDP growth rate continued to decline, and economic development showed an L-shaped growth trend. China’s economic development has stepped into a new normal stage. Under the new normal, the problems brought about by China’s reform and opening up, especially the development model of expanding by volume” in the past two decades, have gradually become more prominent. The Chinese economy has begun to face increasingly urgent development bottlenecks while achieving rapid growth. In this context, Chairman Xi Jinping proposed the construction of the Silk Road Economic Belt” and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road” in 2013, and the Belt and Road Initiative was officially launched. In recent years, the economic effects of the Belt and Road Initiative have received much attention, but the existing literature is mostly limited to the macro level. The research on the Belt and Road Initiative affecting micro-enterprise innovation is still blank. In view of this, the paper attempts to study the microscopic effects of the Belt and Road Initiative on individual enterprises from the perspective of enterprise innovation. The Belt and Road Initiative can be regarded as a quasi-natural experiment. As far as China is concerned, its impact on various provinces is not the same. This provides an opportunity for our research to use difference-in-difference model（DID）. Therefore, the paper drawing on the quasi-natural experimental environment formed by the Belt and Road Initiative, based on the 2012—2017 China A-share listed company data, empirically examines the impact of the Belt and Road Initiative on Chinese enterprise innovation by DID model. Compared with non-key-affected provinces（municipalities）, the Belt and Road Initiative has significantly improved the innovation level of key enterprises in key provinces. Further, from the perspective of outward foreign direct investment（OFDI）and environmental uncertainty, we examine the role of the Belt and Road Initiative in influencing the innovation of Chinese enterprises. The results show that the promotion effect of the Belt and Road Initiative on Chinese enterprise innovation depends heavily on enterprises’ OFDI, and the mediating effect of environmental uncertainty is not obvious. In addition, we conduct a subsample regression analysis based on the firm size, ownership category, and capital intensity. The results show that the Belt and Road Initiative has a significant incentive effect on large companies, state-owned enterprises, and capital-intensive companies. This means that the Belt and Road Initiative can not only alleviate the drag-in effect of state-owned enterprises on economic growth, but also help China’s industrial upgrading and value chain climb from the level of technological innovation. The marginal contributions of this paper may be: First of all, this paper examines the economic effects of the Belt and Road Initiative from the micro perspective of enterprise innovation, which not only enriches the relevant literature on the empirical research of the Belt and Road Initiative, but also makes up for the research gap of the Belt and Road Initiative and enterprise innovation. In addition, this paper also enriches the related research on the macro-influence factors of enterprise innovation, and provides a new perspective for the empirical research of the innovation theory. Finally, this study gives important policy implications to the government and enterprises, and provides theoretical support for the follow-up strategic deployment of the Belt and Road Initiative.

Implementing the minimum wage (M.W.) regime leads to higher barriers to entry and the elimination of inefficient firms. This may be a key factor that affects the efficiency of Chinese firms’ evolution and contributes to macroeconomic growth. Based on Chinese industrial enterprise and district M.W. data, we analyse the impact of China’s M.W. regime on the evolution and behaviour of micro firms and the resulting macroeconomic effects from two aspects: a theoretical model and panel data regression. The results show that the M.W. regime increases firms’ factor productivity significantly but leads to the immobility of incumbents, as it results in lower entry and exit probabilities. Total factor decomposition suggests that a M.W. regime improves regional economic efficiency via the growth effect. In addition, as capital intensity increases, a M.W. regime further boosts the growth in firms’ productivity, but its positive effect on macroeconomic efficiency diminishes. The results help understand the underlying drivers of China’s economic growth and offer important reference significance for rationalising labour policies.

The advancement of green technology innovation (GTI) is crucial for facilitating green development. China, the largest carbon-emitting economy, should prioritize the acceleration of GTI to augment global green economic growth and reduce carbon emissions. Green finance policy (GFP) is a common instrument for encouraging enterprises to develop GTI. This study, therefore, takes the pilot policy of China’s Green Finance Reform and Innovation Pilot Zone as a “quasi-natural experiment” and uses the difference-in-differences method to explore the impact and mechanism of GFP on Chinese enterprises’ GTI. Based on the empirical analysis using microdata from Chinese industrial enterprises from 2015 to 2021, the following conclusions can be drawn. First, GFP has a green innovation polarization effect. It facilitates the development of GTI in green enterprises while hindering the progress of GTI in polluting enterprises. Second, GFP enhances the GTI of green enterprises by promoting innovative behaviors and factor allocation optimization behaviors. However, GFP reduces the GTI of pollution enterprises by promoting non-innovative investments and reducing the efficiency of factor allocation optimization. Third, the combination of policies utilizing GFP, environmental subsidy, and R&D subsidy can effectively increase the GTI of polluting enterprises without compromising the GTI of green enterprises. This study offers empirical evidence and policy recommendations for establishing a green finance system in developing countries.

The synergistic application of human-AI integration and sound-vibration technology is profoundly reshaping the digital transformation landscape and technological innovation in Chinese enterprises. In this research, with technological innovation as the mediating variable, how human-AI integration and sound-vibration technology jointly optimize enterprise digital transformation was investigated. A human-AI collaborative model incorporating sound-vibration technology is constructed and validated using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), revealing its dual role in accelerating digital transformation and driving technological innovation. Data from the power sector of Chinese technology enterprises is analyzed, with 262 observations collected via a structured questionnaire and examined using structural equation modeling. The findings demonstrate that human-AI integration significantly enhances organizational capabilities through complex data processing, sound-vibration signal analysis, and decision optimization, while the application of sound-vibration technology further improves the efficiency of equipment monitoring and predictive maintenance, thereby supporting digital transformation. Technological innovation plays a critical mediating role, with its contributions to operational efficiency and emerging business models empirically validated. The research not only enriches the theoretical framework of human-AI integration and sound-vibration technology in digital transformation but also provides actionable strategic recommendations for enterprises and decision-makers to achieve continuous innovation and competitive advantages in the era of intelligent and digital transformation.

The Belt and Road Initiative is a major strategy proposed by the Chinese government to strengthen economic ties with countries along the route and promote mutually beneficial cooperation. As an important practice of the Belt and Road Initiative, Chinese enterprises' direct investment in countries along the route shows some general characteristics, while Chinese enterprises also face various problems such as high investment risks, cultural differences, and social responsibility issues in the process of direct investment. This paper aims to conduct in-depth research on these issues and propose corresponding countermeasures to promote the investment activities of Chinese enterprises in countries along the Belt and Road. First of all, risk management measures should be adopted, a comprehensive assessment of political, economic, cultural and other factors in countries along the Belt and Road, scientific and reasonable investment plans should be formulated, and the supervision and risk control of investment projects should be strengthened. Second, we should pay attention to technical cooperation and personnel training, improve the technological level of countries along the Belt and Road through technology transfer and technological innovation, and promote economic development and regional cooperation. In addition, we need to pay attention to the social responsibility awareness of enterprises in the process of direct investment, pay attention to environmental protection, etc., and establish a good corporate image and reputation, so as to promote the realization of the "Belt and Road" initiative and jointly promote economic development and prosperity. Finally, this paper concludes that in the face of many problems and challenges, Chinese enterprises need to have a high degree of strategic vision, cultural understanding and risk management capabilities, while focusing on innovation and development, and are committed to achieving mutual benefit and win-win results and achieving common prosperity.

Today, the digital economy has become the main theme. The digital economy includes digital industrialization, industrial digitization, digital governance, and data value. In this context, data has become the kinetic energy of factors for economic development. In recent years, China's new energy vehicle industry has risen rapidly. In the 2024 "Global Top 100 Auto Supply Chain", three Chinese enterprises have entered the top 20: CATL, Weichai Group, and Huayu Automotive. This represents the profound accumulation and innovation ability of Chinese component enterprises and shows the indispensable role and status of Chinese enterprises in the global auto supply chain to the world. The development of the new energy vehicle industry has promoted the reconstruction of the auto industry chain, including the production and manufacturing of core components such as batteries, motors, and electronic controls, as well as the development of fields such as intelligent driving and intelligent interconnection. This transformation has not only promoted technological innovation and business model innovation within the industry but also driven the construction and improvement of related infrastructure, such as the construction of charging piles and battery swapping stations, as well as the development of intelligent transportation systems, providing convenience for the popularization and use of new energy vehicles.

How do patent trolls affect the technological innovation of Chinese enterprises? Evidence from enterprise patent survey data in China

Although the labour productivity of Chinese industrial enterprises has increased to a certain extent in recent years, its growth rate faces the pressure of slowing down and its level is still lower than that of developed countries and some developing countries. At this background, this report focused on studying labour productivity of Chinese industrial enterprises, which could help them understand comprehensively the current situation of their labour productivity and take countermeasures to improve their labour productivity. Through relevant analysis of Chinese industrial enterprises’ labour productivity by collecting the data mainly from the CEIC Data and NBSC, this report found that the labour productivity of Chinese industrial enterprises has shown an overall upward trend since the founding of China, but the growth rate has been unstable and there have been periodic fluctuations. The main factors that affect their labour productivity include human capital, technological innovation, management innovation, market environment and institutional environment. In order to improve their labour productivity, Chinese industrial enterprises were suggested to strengthen human capital investment and cultivation, promote technological innovation and transformation, optimise management innovation and organisational structure, and improve the market and institutional environment

In recent years, Chinese science and technology (S&T) intermediaries have grown rapidly to become the important components of the market-driven economy. In this study, we analyse the characteristics of the Chinese S&T intermediary system and government support policies with regards to the S&T intermediaries’ roles from three aspects of the evolution of technology innovation, the enterprise lifecycle and the enterprise R&D paradigm. To investigate the demands typically placed on S&T intermediaries by Chinese enterprises, we have questioned the selected information technology enterprises in Beijing and Jiangsu provinces. Research shows that demands on S&T intermediaries differ between large-scale enterprises and small and medium-sized enterprises. Furthermore, the Chinese government and enterprises value the S&T intermediary for its function of nurturing the evolution of technology and the enterprise, but overlook its role in open innovation. To address this gap, this research will then help policy makers to better understand how to improve the performance of S&T intermediaries under the open innovation paradigm.

Peeling the onion: Analyzing aggregate, national and sectoral energy intensity in the European Union