China’s High-Tech Industry Innovation Quality Under the Microscope: A Complex Picture of Progress and Challenges
China’s rapid technological ascent in recent decades has drawn considerable global attention, marking the nation as a pivotal player in various high-tech domains. However, a groundbreaking study analyzing 30 Chinese provinces over the period from 2015 to 2021 reveals a nuanced portrait of this growth, particularly in China’s high-tech industries (HTI). The investigation scrutinizes the quality of innovation through a sophisticated evaluation model encompassing three critical dimensions: technology development, innovation achievement transformation, and the persistence of innovation. This multilayered approach offers deep insight into the strengths and vulnerabilities within China’s technology ecosystem.
The overall innovation efficiency across China’s HTI paints a mixed picture. On average, provinces exhibit a relatively low innovation quality, with the aggregate efficiency scoring approximately 0.66 on the study’s scale. This metric indicates substantial room for progression, emphasizing that China’s ambitions in high-tech sectors must be met with tailored strategies aimed at improving the depth and sustainability of innovation. Notably, the study highlights significant disparities among different provinces. While several regions have demonstrated robust innovation capacity and notable stability, others lag considerably behind, underscoring persistent regional imbalances.
Among the top performers are municipalities like Chongqing and Guangxi, which, despite not being coastal economic powerhouses, have exhibited both high innovation quality and consistent stability. Equally compelling are the cases of Guangdong and Jiangsu – two coastal provinces teeming with high-tech enterprises. Their innovation output remains strong, yet these coastal hubs suffer from high volatility in innovation efficiency, indicating an underlying instability within their innovation mechanisms. Meanwhile, provinces such as Fujian, Tianjin, and Shaanxi consistently fall short of innovation benchmarks, revealing systemic challenges and perhaps waning enthusiasm or inadequate policy incentives to foster a vibrant high-tech sector.
Geographical analysis across eastern, central, and western regions further reveals complex dynamics. Contrary to expectations that economic and technological advancements would be concentrated solely in the eastern corridor, the study discovered minimal variation in overall innovation efficiency between regions. However, when the element of stability is considered, the eastern and western provinces appear to enjoy steadier innovation trends, whereas the central region reveals the lowest stability. The period from 2015 to 2021 witnessed an encouraging rise in innovation quality initially, only to experience a downturn post-2019, culminating in an 8% downturn in overall efficiency by 2021 relative to the 2019 peak.
Delving deeper into the three examined stages—technology development, innovation achievement transformation, and persistent innovation—exposes divergent trends. Technology development and transformation phases both achieve somewhat respectable efficiency scores, hovering around 0.77 and 0.76 respectively. However, persistent innovation—a measure of the ability to sustain and nurture innovation over time—is markedly weaker, registering an efficiency score of a mere 0.67. This weakness in persistent innovation has a pronounced dampening effect on overall innovation quality, particularly within provinces like Zhejiang, Anhui, and Hunan, where technology development shortcomings contribute substantially to the lag.
Furthermore, an alarming decline in the efficiency of persistent innovation after 2019 has impacted over half of the surveyed provinces. While the central region presents a reassuring 7% improvement, both the eastern and western regions experienced double-digit declines of 12% and 10% respectively, implying differentiated regional responses to evolving industrial and technological challenges. Among provinces most severely impacted by declines in persistent innovation efficiency are Ningxia, Shanghai, and Jilin, which saw respective drops of 68%, 65%, and 54%. In contrast, Shaanxi, Henan, and Sichuan bucked the trend with spectacular improvements exceeding 78%, spotlighting localized policy successes and targeted efforts.
An intricate assessment of input-output efficiency underpins the observed innovation dynamics, with key bottlenecks identified in specific resource allocations and infrastructural deficits. Excessive industrial electricity consumption emerges as a glaring inefficiency within the technology development stage, coupled with redundant investments in R&D personnel that fail to translate effectively into tangible innovation outcomes. These inefficiencies are particularly acute in provinces such as Shandong, Liaoning, and Inner Mongolia, where patent applications and sales revenue from new products are also insufficient, signaling a disconnect between input efforts and measurable innovation performance.
The transformation of innovation achievements into commercial viability faces its own hurdles. Low efficiency in the innovation achievement transformation stage reflects dual pressures: insufficient patent authorizations limiting the legal protection and leverage of inventions, and minimal sales revenue generated by new products undermining the economic incentives to innovate. This dynamic manifests starkly in regions like Shaanxi, Guizhou, and Liaoning, where new product sales figures are alarmingly low. Such gaps demonstrate the endemic challenges of moving from research labs and prototype development to market penetration and revenue generation.
Persistent innovation inefficiencies, arguably the most critical for long-term industrial vitality, are linked closely to structural institutional weaknesses. A shortage of enterprises actively engaging in R&D and the lack of established R&D institutions together create a formidable barrier to sustaining innovation capacity. The latter has an outsized influence, with more than half the provinces exhibiting output deficiencies exceeding 30% due to inadequate institutional support. Provinces such as Shaanxi, Tianjin, and Liaoning experience particularly acute difficulties, highlighting regional discrepancies in innovation infrastructure and resource deployment.
To address the multifaceted challenges unveiled by these findings, the study advances several forward-looking policy recommendations intersecting national strategic priorities, regional cooperation, and enterprise dynamism. At the national level, it is crucial for China to intensify focus on fundamental research and breakthroughs in core technologies through enhanced governmental incentives and preferential policies targeting high-tech industries. These should be complemented by fiscal, tax, and subsidy policies attuned to the divergent conditions and resource endowments of provinces and regions to curtail inefficiencies and foster equitable development.
Regional collaboration emerges as a powerful lever to galvanize innovation quality. Facilitating industrial transfers, enhancing technological cooperation, and promoting spillover effects can enable provinces within major economic belts such as the Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta to synergize strengths and compensate for individual weaknesses. Importantly, advanced provinces with high innovation efficiency, like Guangdong and Jiangsu, must take a leadership role, setting examples and fostering collaborative ecosystems, while lower-performing provinces need tailored state support to invigorate their innovation landscapes.
Institutional capability is another critical vector for transformation. Strengthening intellectual property rights frameworks and innovation service systems through coordinated policymaking by agencies like the National Development and Reform Commission, Ministry of Science and Technology, and Ministry of Commerce can safeguard enterprise innovation autonomy. Supporting high-tech companies’ integration into national innovation programs and encouraging industry-research institution partnerships via R&D centers will enhance technological achievements and promote sustainable growth.
The industrial ecosystem itself requires strategic restructuring. Expanding and reinforcing industrial chains will improve resilience and endow high-tech sectors with the agility to respond to global uncertainties. Moving beyond straightforward competition, Chinese enterprises must foster balanced cooperation across industries to build comprehensive domestic supply networks and reduce reliance on foreign inputs. Heightened innovation consciousness, coupled with collaboration in upstream and downstream sectors, will be critical to developing independent technological trajectories.
At the micro level, enterprises are the engines of innovation and must ramp up efforts to achieve technological breakthroughs, particularly in areas where foreign firms currently dominate. Mastery of core technologies and increased commercialization capabilities are essential to positioning China favorably on the global map of innovation. Talent cultivation and attraction are indispensable to this endeavor. Domestically, policies encouraging inclusive support mechanisms and reforming talent evaluation systems can unleash creativity and professional drive. Internationally, enhanced efforts to attract top scientific and technological talent will inject fresh perspectives and expertise vital for the HTI.
Overall, this comprehensive assessment invites a recalibration of China’s high-tech innovation strategy, recognizing both the undeniable strides made and the persistent barriers constraining quality and sustainability. The interplay of regional disparities, institutional limitations, and efficiency bottlenecks underscores the complexity of national innovation systems. Addressing these challenges through coordinated policy, collaborative development, and enterprise-driven innovation offers a roadmap not just for China, but also for other nations navigating the intricate dynamics of advancing technological frontiers in an increasingly interconnected world.
Subject of Research: Innovation quality in China’s high-tech industries analyzing technology development, innovation achievement transformation, and persistent innovation across provinces.
Article Title: Evaluation of innovation quality in China’s high-tech industries—technological development, innovation achievement transformation, and persistent innovation.
Article References:
Ji, L., Tao, S., Li, M. et al. Evaluation of innovation quality in China’s high-tech industries—technological development, innovation achievement transformation, and persistent innovation. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 12, 1916 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-025-06184-x
