To take advantage of the new system for mobilizing resources nationwide to boost China’s national strength in strategic science and technology, it is essential to strengthen the leadership by the Communist Party of China (CPC) and to guide the development of China’s strength in strategic science and technology in line with the Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era. For this purpose, high-level platforms for innovation should be built quickly, and refined through the introduction of major national projects. Furthermore, institutional frameworks should be continuously innovated, while open and inclusive development should be continued.
Scientific and technological strength, the ability to achieve national strategic goals in science and technology, is not only a significant component of national comprehensive strength, but also the scientific and technological innovation foundation for continuous strengthening national comprehensive strength. The quantitative evaluation of China’s scientific and technological strength from 2000 to 2020 shows tremendous progress in science and technology, transitioning from a catching-up country to an innovationdriven country. China has moved from the second array to the first array of global science and technology, securing a historic shift from mere quantity to high quality. This fully demonstrates the political advantage on the overall leadership of the Communist Party of China, the strategic advantage of innovation-driven development, and the advantages of the new system for mobilizing resources nationwide under the socialist market economy with a wealth of human resources in science and technology. Based on China's strategic requirements of pursuing self-reliance and strength in science and technology as support for national development, this paper proposes policy recommendations for the future development of various advantages and favorable conditions, aiming to strengthen national strength in strategic science and technology and to implement the innovation-driven development strategy. Furthermore, prospects for China's scientific and technological vision for 2025 and 2035 are presented, envisioning a significant increase in scientific and technological strength and China’s entry into the advanced ranks among the most innovative countries in the world.
The national strength in strategic science and technology is one of the key terms elaborated in the Report to the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), highlighting its strategic significance for the manufacturing sector in enhancing China’s international competitiveness and overall innovation performance. Based on the shift-share analysis, significant regional disparities are noted in the distribution of national strength in strategic science and technology in the manufacturing sector in China. The northeast China region and the Yellow River middle reaches comprehensive economic region exhibit the highest industry mix effect in talent structure and in R&D structure. Furthermore, the computer and office equipment manufacturing industry shows a large spatial shift, indicating that the industry mix and spatial distribution of high-tech industries in China need urgent optimization. A comparison of international experiences in the building of national strength in strategic science and technology reveals that China faces problems such as imbalance of investment contributors, insufficient innovation synergy, and weak R&D domains. Therefore, it is necessary to apply a systemic approach to planning comprehensively for advancing the national strength in strategic science and technology. To this end, the immediate task is to mobilize national strategic scientific and technological capabilities to create a collaborative innovation complex.
Taking Company M as the research object, this study adopts a case study method to explore the evolution of enterprise competitive advantage differentiation matching and resource-focused action in the iterative innovation process under the synergy of opportunity identification and ambidextrous strategic combination. This study reveals the formation mechanism and path of iterative innovation in enterprises, finding that opportunity identification is a dynamic and complex process with significant variations. Enterprises can creatively utilize the synergy between ambidextrous strategic combinations based on the identified opportunities to stimulate differentiated allocation of competitive advantage modules based on resource heterogeneity and incomplete factor-mobility, and to achieve strategic flexibility. The adaptive interaction between opportunity identification and ambidextrous strategic combination drives the staged evolution of resource-focused action, including resource bricolage, arrangement, and orchestration, thereby realizing the iterative innovation process of “technology explorationbased development model-market expansion-based development model-collaborative innovation-based development model.”
Integrated circuit is a typical key product in the digital economy era. Given external containment, breakthroughs in core technologies of integrated circuit are confronted with barriers of first movers in underlying technological ecology and with their threats of decoupling from the supply chain. Currently, China has various bottlenecks in the proprietary industrial ecosystem, and domestic substitution lacks effective overall planning. Therefore, it is essential to apply the underlying logic of asymmetric competition and to leverage a relatively complete industrial system, abundant application scenarios, solid talent base, and the institutional advantages of the new system for mobilizing resources nationwide to break through in integrated circuit manufacturing technology and in domestic substitution. As such, it is necessary to further strengthen the top-level design, leverage the advantages of the new system for mobilizing resources nationwide to enhance the institutional guarantee for domestic substitution of bottlenecks, and enhance basic research to consolidate the technological foundation for domestic substitution. Moreover, we should implement talent strategy to enhance the driving force of human resource for domestic substitution development. We should also further opening-up and cooperation policy to create an open domestic substitution ecology. In addition, we should increase counter-cyclical investment to nurture leaders in asymmetric competition, and seize the demand window to drive domestic substitution with “epoch-making products.”