Date: Tuesday 4 Oct 2022
Time: 5.00 – 6.00pm AEST
Location: Online
Sydney China Seminars
About this event
Sentiment about whether China can sustain its economic development is becoming increasingly pessimistic as both domestic and geopolitical issues faced by the country are getting more challenging and complex. China’s extraordinary economic development in the past can be explained in large part by the way it innovates. A key question, then, is whether the innovation machine can provide an answer to China’s future challenges.
Contrary to widely held views, China’s innovation machine is not created and controlled by an all-powerful government. Instead, it is a complex, interdependent system composed of hundreds of millions of elements, involving bottom-up innovation driven by innovators and entrepreneurs and highly pragmatic and adaptive top-down policy. China’s innovation, however, suffers from insufficient attention to basic research and disconnections between research and innovation, especially in certain critical technologies. The future success of China’s innovation will depend on, first, the continuation of policy pragmatism that encourages market-driven and innovation-led entrepreneurship; second, strengthening of basic research exploring unknown futures; and third, breakthroughs in certain critical technologies that rely heavily on imports.
Using case studies of industries, such as semiconductors and biopharmaceuticals, we argue that China’s innovation machine is similar to a natural ecosystem. Like resilience of a natural ecosystem that comes from the system’s ability to recover from and adapt to external shocks and stresses, China needs to enhance its ability to not only strategically respond to crisis and external shocks, but also proactively adapt to the new environment. Diversity and agility are key. How China innovates has important implications not only for China but also for the rest of the world.
About the speakers
Marina Yue ZHANG is an associate professor at the Australia-China Relations Institute, University of Technology Sydney. She holds a bachelor’s degree in biological sciences from Peking University, and a PhD from Australian National University. Her current research looks into innovation & technology and draws managerial and policy implications for Australia-China relations.
Mark DODGSON, AO, is Emeritus Professor at the University of Queensland, Australia, and Visiting Professor at Imperial College London, UK.
David GANN, CBE (He will be joining us for the Q & A session) is Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Development and External Affairs, Professor of Innovation & Entrepreneurship at Saïd Business School, and Fellow of Magdalen College at the University of Oxford, UK.