High-tech industries have played a role in the rapid development of the Chinese economy. However, few companies that had operated under the planned economy until the liberalization and reforms in 1978 could generate and lead high-tech industries. In this situation, university-industry collaboration was promoted under government backing and has contributed to the development of high-tech industries in China.
This study aims to first clarify the actual state and development of university-industry collaboration from the 1990s to the 2000s, and then, to describe the mechanism of university-industry-government collaboration through case studies.
Two periods are shown through this study. The first is an era of a direct type of industrial creation in the 1990s, represented by university-run enterprises. This study finds that from the late 1980s to the 1990s, university-run enterprises in China increased rapidly as universities had to acquire research funds on their own because of the government’s fiscal predicament. Moreover, companies were not recipients of technology transfer, and thus, engineers in universities had to commercialize their technologies by themselves. As a result, academia outside the market complemented industry by creating and driving the development of new industries.
The second is an era of an indirect type of industrial creation from the 2000s onward. This study shows that in the early 2000s, owing to economic reforms, the direct collaboration between universities and university-run enterprises was discarded and university-run enterprises took the form of university-owned enterprises. Furthermore, this ongoing period emphasizes new technology transfer, as well as incubation facilities such as university-founded science parks. Universities now transfer technologies to outside companies, rather than form companies themselves. Thus, the universities’ role has changed from commercialization of technologies through university-run enterprises to enhancement of competitiveness among companies through technology transfers.