Preface
(One)
Independent innovation as a very common phenomenon has existed throughout China's long history. The creation of the stone weapon during the stone age, followed by four great inventions and all of the technological innovations using modern technology and science during almost 40 years of the reform and opening up, all reflect the wisdom of the Chinese nation and show people the brilliant Chinese culture and its contribution to the world. No innovation, no progress of human society. No innovation from the Chinese nation, no advance of human civilization.
In the early 1990s, the concepts of “leading innovation” and “independent innovation” were put forward in China. However, not much attention was paid to them at that time in the Chinese society. Nowadays, it is independent innovation that calls much attention to China and not only represents a kind of confidence and determination in national development, but also has much deeper economic and political implications. The 17th CPC National Congress in 2007 clearly pointed out that “Enhancing the capability of independent innovation means constructing an innovative country”; and this Congress demanded that China insist on a policy of independent innovation with Chinese characteristics and that the country implement the concept of “enhancing the capability of independent innovation” in all aspects of the process of modernization. The primary goal in building an innovative country is the ability to significantly enhance independent innovation, so that the contribution of scientific and technological progress to economic growth can increase sharply and China will make it into the group of innovative countries by 2020.
Why didn't we emphasize the importance and urgency of independent innovation in the past as we do today? It is easy to find an answer by looking back on the history of innovation in modern and contemporary China to see that our nation has not had any achievements to match the four great inventions of the past for a long time. Today, people feel that inventions are as remote as ancient history. Are there any modern Chinese inventions that can shout to the world with confidence that they have truly been invented solely by us Chinese? No, not indeed! We do not remember ancient history; we merely remember the recent history of the Qing Dynasty. Due to the weak and ineffective Qing policies, the West attacked China without any strong counterattack from the Qing government. A few national industries were equipped with imported Western capitalist goods. The Westernization movement had the policy of “adopting Western culture, but giving it the backbone of Chinese culture.” Despite bringing new ways of thinking and vitality to the Chinese feudal society that promoted the fundamental development of the national industry, it did not bring wealth and power due to the age-old feudal force. The Chinese nation was devastated in the Republican period between 1912 and 1949 with the unending civil and foreign wars. Though in the meanwhile, to some extent, our national capitalistic industry developed, few innovations appeared. Our national industry had made no significant progress. The majority of machine equipment was introduced from foreign countries.
In the first 30 years after the foundation of People's Republic of China, all kinds of social programs were created and began to develop in the right direction. Our country had built a more comprehensive economic system, especially concerning its industrial system, for example, electricity, the aeronautics and astronautics industry, the petrochemical industry, the auto and atomic energy industries had already been developed before 1978. Besides, the improvement of fixed assets and equipment also reflected the promotion of Chinese industrial technology. From the perspective of the industrial structure, it changed from mainly composed of primary industry to half primary, half secondary industry in about 30 years, from 1949 to 1978. The progress of industrialization changed the original situation of primary industry-dominant in China. The successful development of the atomic and hydrogen bombs, man-made satellites, modern aircraft, 10,000-ton hydraulic forging machines, and 10,000-tonners manifests the spirit of innovation of China.
After the Third Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party in 1978, we began to reform our economic system, and opened our domestic market to the world. Plenty of advanced foreign ways of thinking, technologies, and equipment were successively introduced. Thus, the whole national economy underwent a great transformation and was boosted. In the meanwhile, new problems appeared. Many foreign products have obtained a larger and larger share of our market since it opened up to foreign merchants. The market strategy and policy for technology do not bring us advanced international core technologies in every industry, therefore, China has become the processing base for industrialized countries and most profits flow into foreign pockets. For example, the price of our national DVD is less than 30 dollars, but two-thirds of the 30 dollars go to the patent fee of the foreign merchants. Our corporation gets only 1.5 dollars. We have a huge market with so many people, but our national corporations are not capable of taking the lead in the share of our domestic market. Lots of our national corporations are trapped in a vyious cycle, namely “introduction-imitation-incompetence-reintroduction.” Therefore, we regret that we do not make exchanges with the advanced Western core technologies on our market. The year 2005 called on us to create a national strategy of independent innovation. All of the above are the reasons why the concept of “enhancing the capability of independent innovation, constructing an innovative country” was clearly put forward in the report of the 17th CPC National Congress in 2007.
(Two)
It deserves to be emphasized that there is no common view concerning the concept and theory of domestic independent innovation, though the words “independent innovation” have been written into relevant governmental documents for many years, and the whole society emphasizes and focuses on it persistently. Thus, the Chinese Ministry of Education has decided to support the Research Center for Technological Innovation of Tsinghua University to carry out theoretical research on Chinese independent innovation. This book is a main result of that theoretical research. This research has analyzed 9 cases of enterprises and 1 case of industry involved in independent innovations based on discussions of the fundamental problems of independent innovation, followed then by a summary.
This book has 6 chapters. The first chapter is an introduction, which explains the concept of “independent innovation” and the various ways it can be implemented. This chapter interprets some concepts related to independent innovation and introduces the outline of the entire book. The second chapter discusses the emergence of Chinese independent innovation, and then states that China must insist on the strategy of independent innovation, which is based on the practical enlightenment that we use our market to exchange for technology, that Japan established the fundamental practice through imitation, followed then by improvement, innovation, and development, and that the Republic of Korea has a kind of independent innovation based on introduction. Moreover, restraining factors of independent innovation are also pointed out in this chapter. The third chapter discusses the efficient path towards independent innovation based on the analyses of relevant cases. From these cases the path towards independent-innovation is concluded at the enterprise level from low-end to high-end (implementation, adoption, and re-innovation), the path towards independent innovation is concluded, based on the concept of knowledge-integration-innovation, and the path towards independent innovation goes from high-end to direct innovation (original innovation). The fourth chapter discusses the ability to construct, the potential mode, and the track to follow in order to reach independent innovation. This chapter involves the ability to innovate and the ability to innovate independently, the path towards enterprise innovation, and the way to achieve industry innovation, as well as how to achieve enterprise independent innovation and the ability to construct, the path towards industrial independent innovation, and the ability to construct. The fifth chapter discusses technology integration and the mechanism for enterprise independent innovation. Finally, this chapter discusses the relationship between technology integration and independent innovation, the content of and the procedure for achieving technology integration; it also talks about technology integration in two perspectives and introduces a feasible mechanism for enterprise technology integration. The sixth chapter discusses the institutional support for independent innovation, namely the construction of a system of innovation. This chapter involves the historical evolution of the Chinese system of innovation and the relevant institutional problems of constructing our country oriented towards independent innovation, as well as industry and enterprise innovation.
(Three)
The appendix to this book includes all enterprise cases and industry cases which are analyzed in the case-study research “the theoretical research of Chinese independent innovation.” The enterprise cases are Huawei, CIMC, BYD, Tencent, Xunlei, Mindray, CHINT Group, Nuctech, Chery, etc. The industry case is the equipment manufacturing industry.
At the time of the publication of this book, we thank the support from Department of Social Science of the Ministry of Education and the Research Center for Technological Innovation of Tsinghua University, Humanities and Social Sciences Base of the Ministry of Education.
Zhong Huibo
Professor at Beijing Institute of Technology
Lei Jiasu
Professor at Tsinghua University
Aug. 10, 2016