Richard P. Suttmeier, Cong Cao, and Denis Fred Simon

Innovations: Technology, Governance, Globalization

The stress on indigenous innovation should be understood in the context of China’s heavy reliance on foreign technology over the past 25 years, a reliance which has created an unwelcome technological dependency in the minds of many in China.

Against this backdrop, the authors examine the efforts of China’s premier academic institution, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), to remake itself through the implementation of an ambitious program of reform, the “Knowledge Innovation Program.” With its institutional legacy rooted in the centrally planned system of the past, its relevance for a dynamic, globalized, market driven innovation system of the 21st century has been widely questioned by observers both in China and abroad. The role of CAS is thus of central importance for the realization of the objectives of the 15-year Plan.