The volume focuses on the issue of globalization of research and development (R&D) in China. China has become the number one choice of R&D for multination corporations (MNCs), according to a recent survey. Many of the largest MNCs in the world, such as Microsoft, GE, GM, HP, Motorola, and Lucent, among hundred of others, have established R&D facilities. The phenomenon has become a hot issue among policy debates in many countries regarding job outsourcing, national and regional competitiveness, and China. This book examines the issue of foreign R&D, particularly, those from MNCs in China: the drivers, missions, locations, management challenges, policies, and implications for China's innovation system. This book was previously published as a special issue of the Asia Pacific Business Review.

The volume focuses on the issue of globalization of research and development (R&D) in China. China has become the number one choice of R&D for multination corporations (MNCs), according to a recent survey. Many of the largest MNCs in the world, such as Microsoft, GE, GM, HP, Motorola, and Lucent, among hundred of others, have established R&D facilities. The phenomenon has become a hot issue among policy debates in many countries regarding job outsourcing, national and regional competitiveness, and China. This book examines the issue of foreign R&D, particularly, those from MNCs in China: the drivers, missions, locations, management challenges, policies, and implications for China's innovation system. This book was previously published as a special issue of the Asian Pacific Business Review.

This volume assesses China's transition to innovation-nation status in terms of social conditions, industry characteristics and economic impacts over the past three decades, also providing insights into future developments. Defining innovation as the process that generates a higher quality, lower cost product than was previously available, the introductory chapter conceptualizes the theory of an innovation nation and the lessons from Japan and Untied States. It outlines the key governance, employment and investment institutions that China must build for such transition to occur, and examines China's challenges and strategies to innovate in the era of global production systems. Two succeeding chapters explain the evolving roles of Chinese state in innovation, and the new landscape of venture capital finance. The remaining chapters provide studies of major industries, which contain analyses of the evolving roles of investment by government agencies and business interests in the process. Included in these studies are traditional industries such as mechanical engineering, railroads, and automobiles; rapidly evolving and internationally highly integrated industries such as information-and-communication-technology (ICT); and newly emerging sectors such as wind and solar energy. Written by leading academics in the field, studies in this volume reveal Chinese innovation as diverse across industries and enterprises and fluid over time. In each sector, we observe continued co-evolution of state policy, market demand, and technology development. The strategies and structures of individual companies and industrial ecosystems are changing rapidly. The sum total of the studies is a great step forward in our understanding of the industrial foundations of China's attempt to become an innovation nation.