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Measuring the knowledge-based economy of China in terms of synergy among technological, organizational, and geographic attributes of firms

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Abstract

Using the possible synergy among geographic, size, and technological distributions of firms in the Orbis database, we find the greatest reduction of uncertainty at the level of the 31 provinces of China, and an additional 18.0 % at the national level. Some of the coastal provinces stand out as expected, but the metropolitan areas of Beijing and Shanghai are (with Tianjin and Chongqing) most pronounced at the next-lower administrative level of (339) prefectures, since these four “municipalities” are administratively defined at both levels. Focusing on high- and medium-tech manufacturing, a shift toward Beijing, Shanghai, and Tianjin (near Beijing) is indicated, but the synergy is on average not enhanced. High- and medium-tech manufacturing is less embedded in China than in Western Europe. Knowledge-intensive services “uncouple” the knowledge base from the regional economies mostly in Chongqing and Beijing. Unfortunately, the Orbis data is incomplete since it was collected for commercial and not for administrative or governmental purposes. However, we provide a methodology that can be used by others who may have access to higher-quality statistical data for the measurement.

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Notes

  1. The NACE code can be translated into the International Standard Industrial Classification (ISIC) that is used, for example, in the USA.

  2. idem.

  3. When we returned to the database on May 20, 2013, the retrieval was 1,612,309.

  4. Available at http://www.sts.org.cn/sjkl/gjscy/data2012/data12.pdf, Retreived on November 1, 2013.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Inga Ivanova, Fred Y. Ye, and two anonymous referees for comments on a previous version of this manuscript. The study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) with grant number 71073153.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR), University of Amsterdam, Kloveniersburgwal 48, 1012 CX, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Loet Leydesdorff

  2. Department of Information Resource Management, Zhejiang University, No. 866 Yuhangtang Road, Hangzhou, 310058, China

    Ping Zhou

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  1. Loet Leydesdorff
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  2. Ping Zhou
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Correspondence to Ping Zhou.

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Leydesdorff, L., Zhou, P. Measuring the knowledge-based economy of China in terms of synergy among technological, organizational, and geographic attributes of firms. Scientometrics 98, 1703–1719 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-013-1179-1

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