School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University
Research Center for Technology Innovation, Tsinghua University

在国际形势巨变的背景下,尽快实现科技自立自强意义重大。挑战在于,科技自立自强的科学内涵是什么,实现科技自立自强的内在逻辑和基本条件是什么,为什么过去的政策和战略有效性不足,都需要进行深入的理论分析。本文通过对相关理论分析表明,实现科技自立自强需要对现有的创新体系、产业体系、经济体系进行重塑,并以此为基础提出实现科技自立自强的基本思路以及在政府政策、企业战略、高校战略方面的建议。

It’s crucial for China to realize self-reliance in science and technology when there are dramatic changes in internationaleconomic relations. In fact, the goal of realizing self-reliance in science and technology has been reflected in more and moregovernment policies since the US began to dramatically Change its policies toward China in 2018. However, there exists hugechallenges in implementing these polices and realizing this goal of self-reliance. For example, it’s not clear why the results ofindigenous innovation are not as high as expected, although China decided to promote indigenous innovation and make China aninnovation-based country in 2006. Similarly, it’s becoming more and more important to understand the true role of the policy ofopening China’s market to foreign firms in the process of technological and economic catching up, given the fact that Japan highlyprotected its domestic market but achieved outstanding catching up performance. Based on reviewing the extant literature, especiallythe studies on the relationship among science, technology, and innovation, the studies on the sources of competitive advantage offirms and nations, the studies on the relationships between the market and the government, this paper argues that the strategy ofjoining innovation systems and economic systems dominated by the US has been out of dated and the new strategy to deal withchallenges caused by dramatic changes in the international environment might be the development of China’s own innovation systemand economic system, dramatically reducing local firms’ reliance on foreign technologies and products. To implement this newstrategy, huge changes are necessary in government policies, firm strategies, and university and research institutes choices. For thegovernment, in addition to effectively protecting local firms’ interests when they are facing technology and market blockade, it’snecessary to take actions such as initiating large scale programs to support indigenous technological innovation and increasing thescale and scope of sponsoring R&D at various organizations through various government channels. Because of the huge domesticmarket, the government has strong leverage if the huge local market is effectively used as strategic resources. For universities, a lot ofbig changes are also necessary, including the creation of new organizations focusing on technological development rather than writingpapers based on basic research. Changing the policies of educating students at various levels, especially at the Ph.D. level, is alsoimportant. In this regard, the impact of the choices of university leadership (short term oriented or long term oriented) is obvious. Forfirms, it’s also necessary to make fundamental changes. For example, different from relying mainly on transferring externaltechnology, it’s becoming more and more important to significantly improve the capability of internal technology development andreduce technology reliance on foreign firms. For industry leaders, it’s not enough to improve internal innovation capabilities. It is alsoimportant to help other local firms in the innovation system to improve their technological capabilities and management capabilities,which in many cases means the using of less advanced and reliable technologies and products from local firms, a seemingly irrationalchoice.

教育部人文社科基地重大项目“面向高水平科技自立自强的科技创新战略”(22JJD630009)

高旭东. 在体系再造中实现科技自立自强:理论、政策与战略[J]. 工程研究——跨学科视野中的工程, 2023, 15(6): 510-523.Gao X D.

Realizing self-reliance and self-strengthening in science and technology through system transformation: theory,policy, and strategy[J]. Journal of Engineering Studies, 2023, 15(6): 510-523.