Chikubig – Hannover/Greifswald
The project ‘China-specific characteristics of innovation development in artificial intelligence and environmental protection: educational system, science-industry interactions, large-scale innovation clusters’ (Chikubig) aims to research, document and analyse essential characteristics of China-specific innovation processes.
China is becoming an engine of innovation, but one that is guided by non-Western conditions and governance mechanisms. This joint project focuses on China-specific innovation preconditions and results from the areas of education, institutions and organisational forms in the important future fields of artificial intelligence (AI) and environmental technologies. In particular, it focuses on creativity development, cooperation between science and industry, and the organisation of innovations in state-led large-scale projects and clusters.
Contact:
- Leibniz Universität Hannover / Institute of Economic and Cultural Geography
- Project Management: Prof. Dr. Ingo Liefner
Project Partners:
- Leibniz Universität Hannover / Institute of Vocational Education and Adult Education: Prof. Dr. Steffi Robak
- University of Greifswald / Institute of Geography and Geology: Prof. Dr. Daniel Schiller
Website:
Link to project website
CHINNOCOM – Mannheim/Hohenheim
The project ‘CHINNOCOM’ examines the effectiveness of China’s innovation policy in supporting innovation and competitiveness as well as the adaptation of firms in Germany to increasing import competition from China.
The starting point is the observation of increasing research and development (R&D) expenditures and patent applications combined with decreasing total factor productivity (TFP) growth, suggesting insufficient returns to innovation. Therefore, the first step is to examine the causal impact of innovation on competitiveness (TFP) in China. Particular attention is paid to whether China's R&I policy succeeds in generating stronger productivity effects through government innovation incentives compared to market-oriented innovations. In the second and third step, the study examines whether and how companies in Germany are adapting to increasing Chinese import competition. For business and politics, it is of central importance to understand whether product market competition with producers from China and the increasing Chinese supply of technologically high-quality inputs in the factor market represent an incentive or a barrier to innovation in German companies.
Contact:
- ZEW – Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research / Department Economics of Innovation and Industrial Dynamics
- Project Management: Dr. Philipp Böing
Project partners:
- University of Hohenheim / Chair for Innovation Management: Prof. Dr. Bernd Ebersberger
Websites:
Link to project website (ZEW)
Link to project website (Hohenheim)
ChiP-NI – Osnabrück
The Chinese project ‘New Infrastructure’: the examples of 5G and Smart Energy Transition between structural policy and economic stimulus package.
In Germany, there is a lack of knowledge about the way China's national policies are implemented at the municipal and provincial level. ChiP-NI aims to provide this knowledge by following the ‘funnel’ of increasingly concrete lawmaking and law application across the three levels against the backdrop of the Chinese project ‘New Infrastructure’. Taking the two use cases of 5G and smart energy transition as examples, Professors Dr. (NTU) Georg Gesk and Dr. Bernd J. Hartmann, in collaboration with Chinese legal scholars, will explore new Chinese sources of lawmaking through translation and place them in the cultural context of Chinese legal application practice.
Contact:
- Osnabrück University / Chair of Public Law, Business Law and Administrative Sciences
- Project Management: Prof. Dr. Hartmann
Project partner:
- Osnabrück University / Department of Law, Chair of Chinese Law; Prof. Dr. Gesk
CRC3-Economy – Freiberg
Chemical recycling for China's Transition towards a Circular Carbon Economy
China is at the beginning of its transformation from a linear to a circular economy. The growing global interest in chemical recycling (CR) is driven by its potential contribution to this transformation as well as to resolving other current challenges, such as the global plastic/waste crisis, the conservation of primary resources, the increase of supply security, and the need to reduce CO2 emissions. However, while many publications have focused on the technical implementation of CR, there is currently a lack of information on the societal, social, economic, and innovation-political aspects for its implementation in China. To fill this gap, the CRC3-Economy project focuses on:
- identifying the status quo in China's waste management and chemical industries as well as the effects of CR on climate, environment, and society,
- analysing CR in the context of Chinese innovation policy, along the institutional and human dimensions,
- comparing various innovation policy instruments in China and Germany using CR as an example, and
- deriving recommendations to increase public, market, and policy support using CR as an example.
Contact:
- TU Bergakademie Freiberg / Institute of Energy Process Engineering and Chemical Engineering
- Project Management: Prof. Dr. Martin Gräbner and Dr. Roh-Pin Lee
DITAC – Halle (Saale)
Digital Transformation of China's Agriculture - Resources, Trade and Food Security
The global demand for nutritious, safe, and healthy food is ever increasing. In countries like China, which have a comparatively low endowment of natural resources relative to the total population, this demand is met through intensive agriculture or through imports from world markets. In recent years, China started to resort to digitalisation technologies as key strategies to transform agricultural production and food value chains towards efficient, resilient, and sustainable systems.
The main objective of DITAC is to analyse and valuate the digitalisation transition in the Chinese agricultural and food sector with regard to their impact on production, resource use and trade. Based on a systematic survey of the status quo of digital agriculture in China, econometric and behavioral economic analyses of the adaptation and implementation of selected technologies as well as an empirical estimation of the economic and ecological consequences will be carried out. The findings will serve as a basis for a discussion of future development paths and impact assessment of digital transformation processes from a global perspective. At the same time, they provide important indications regarding the impact on international trade relations.
Contact:
Website:
Link to project website
D-TraC – Braunschweig
The Digital Transformation of School Education in China: Policies, Governance Structures and Perceptions
China is a global leader in the digital transformation of school education. To date, however, there have been hardly any systematic analyses that simultaneously examine the conditions for success and the consequences of this transformation process. The project D-Trac fills this gap. While the Chinese partner analyses the digital transformation of the school with a special focus on media production and media practices, the GEI explores the societal implications of these processes at three levels:
- At the policy level, it examines objectives laid out in the strategy papers of government agencies, think tanks, and EdTech firms.
- At the level of governance structures, it maps the relevant actors and analyses efficiency potential, but also examines possible tension in the cooperation between central, regional, and urban government agencies as well as between governmental and nongovernmental actors.
- At the level of local stakeholders, it explores teachers’, parents’, and students’ expectations of digital innovation.
The substantive focuses of the research are the quality of teaching, the in/equality of access to education, and the control of data. Geographically, it focuses on three provinces, Zhejiang, Hunan and Yunnan, which were selected according to the principle of maximum contrast.
Contact:
- Leibniz Institute for Educational Media | Georg Eckert Institute (GEI), Department Media| Transformation
- Project Management: Dr. Kaiyi Li
EUcU_FE – Frankfurt/Bremen
Cooperation of European firms with Chinese universities: Forms and Effects
This project will provide evidence on collaborations between European firms and Chinese research institutions. We will identify collaboration patterns by scraping websites of leading Chinese universities, research institutes of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), and WeChat accounts. We ask:
- What forms of collaboration can be identified between Chinese research institutions and European firms?
- FFrom the firm’s viewpoint, what effects does the collaboration generate?
- Under which conditions can more legitimacy and innovation be achieved?
To answer our research questions, we combine web-scraping, survey questionnaires and statistical analysis with grounded, qualitative methods. We expect a better understanding of university-industry collaboration in China, and a better assessment of the opportunities and risks of international university-industry collaboration.
Contact:
Scoring – Lüneburg/Witten
Analysis of the social credit system in the PR China and scoring in the West (SCHUFA et al.) to promote European-Chinese cooperation
The project investigates scoring procedures concerning individuals and organizations in the fields of finance, politics, health and in relation to scientists and scientific organizations on a national and international level in an intercultural comparison between the PR China and Europe in order to enable or improve cooperation between China and Europe and mutual understanding.
Research will be conducted on the genesis and development of the Chinese Social Credit System (SCS) partly based on European and US models, its differences from data collection and analysis in Europe, the significance and impact of health apps on smartphones in China and Europe under political and data protection aspects, especially in view of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the particular problem of the impact of smartphone use and scoring on healthy development, especially of children and adolescents. Implications of scientist / organisation scoring for international science collaboration will also be explored.
Contact:
Project partners:
- Leuphana University of Lüneburg / Institute for Culture and Aesthetics of Digital Media; Prof. Dr. Martin Warnke
Sino-Inno-Cap – Aschaffenburg/Frankfurt
Corporate Venture Capital as Innovation Tool for Global Technology Leadership in China
The emerging country of China has already overtaken Germany and Europe in some key industries. In 2018, for example, of the 20 globally leading internet companies, eleven come from the U.S. and nine from China, none from Europe (in 2014, only two were from China). Germany and Europe can learn from Chinese methods of fostering innovation. Especially due to the findings of the current EFI annual report on corporate investments by Chinese companies as well as the technological focus of the ‘Made in China 2025’ initiative, the topic is currently highly relevant.
The aim of Sino-Inno-Cap is to analyse the significance, structure and impact of external innovation measures in the course of the inorganic corporate development of large Chinese companies (both private and state-owned). The focus here is on investigating corporate venture capital (and by extension M&A) as a tool for achieving technology leadership in key industries. The result should be the expansion of China competence for parts of the German and European innovation and financial system.
Contact:
- Aschaffenburg University of Applied Sciences / Faculty of Business and Law
- Project Management: Prof. Dr. Boris Bauke
Project partners:
Website:
Link to project website
TCM – Aachen
The transformation of China's drug supply infrastructure: How the Interaction of Institutional and Technical Change Reshapes Drug Supply Chain Management, Medication Management, and Waste Drug Management
The aim of the project TCM is to make a significant contribution to understanding China’s drug supply infrastructure and its transformation through digitalisation.
From a scientific perspective, the drug distribution sector in China is interesting because it is characterised by rapid institutional and technological change and therefore the interaction of technological and institutional change can be studied particularly well here. From a practical perspective, the change in the Chinese system of drug supply also has implications for Germany and Europe.
On the one hand, the Chinese market for pharmaceutical products will replace the US market as the global lead market in the future, so that the strategies of pharmaceutical companies and also of the operators of digital health platforms will increasingly be geared to the Chinese market. The pharmaceutical products and digital medical services available in Germany and Europe will therefore also be co-determined in China.
On the other hand, the success of the Chinese government in digitally transforming its drug supply infrastructure will also have further indirect effects on Germany and Europe, particularly with regard to combating the emergence of antibiotic resistance. A holistic view of the drug supply infrastructure therefore also includes the areas of medication management and drug disposal. The project results will enable German and European policy-makers to assess the impact of the transformation of the Chinese drug supply infrastructure on the supply of pharmaceutical products and digital health services.
Contact:
- RWTH Aachen University / Business Information Systems and Electronic Business
- Project Management: Prof. Dr. Kai Reimers
UIIChina – Duisburg/Bochum/Berlin
Corporate Innovation In and With China – Options for German and European Decision-Makers in a Dynamic Environment
The research project investigates the forces driving the design of China’s innovation system and its integration into the international context. It aims at a better understanding of the double balance of decentralisation/centralisation and China's international integration, with a special focus on the role of German and European companies.
This project has a strong exploratory orientation. It will collect new, relevant data, process it in a structured manner and make it available to actors in the German / European innovation sphere (politics, companies, academia). At the analytical level, the project aims to substantially improve the state of knowledge in Germany and Europe about structures, mechanisms and development dynamics of the Chinese innovation system at the level of central government innovation policy, locally designed initiatives (pilot zones) and the involvement of international actors, especially companies. Important trajectories will be identified and presented in their significance for Germany and the EU. Thus, the project will produce central building blocks for evidence-based options for action for decisionmakers in politics, business and science.
Contact:
- University of Duisburg-Essen / Chair for East Asian Economic Studies / China
- Project Management: Prof. Dr. Markus Taube
Project partners:
- Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS, Berlin, Dr. Mikko Huotari
- Ruhr-Universität Bochum, East Asian Politics, Prof. Dr. Jörn-Carsten Gottwald
WFCXI – Erlangen/Berlin
Academic Freedom in the People’s Republic of China
The objective of the FAU project is to analyse the legal and institutional framework and empirical reality of the ‘freedom indispensable for scientific research’ in the PRC. Examining academic freedom in the era of Xi Jinping from a socio-legal perspective is necessary for understanding current opportunities and limits in the Chinese research and innovation system.
The project explores the two aspects of institutional autonomy of Chinese universities and freedom of academic exchange, which are both subdimensions of academic freedom as enshrined under international law. Taking international law as the benchmark, this project is particularly interested in evaluating developments since President Xi Jinping assumed office in 2013. The findings shall be discussed and validated with leading China experts and made public for use by other researchers as well as policy makers. Therefore, this project aims to broaden our understanding regarding the opportunities and limits of scientific collaboration with Chinese partners in light of international standards of academic freedom.
Contact:
- FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg / Institute of Political Science, International Politics of Human Rights
- Project Management: Prof. Dr. Katrin Kinzelbach
Project partners:
- German Centre for Higher Education Research and Science Studies (DZHW), Research Area Research System and Science Dynamics; Dr. Stephan Stahlschmidt
Website:
Link to project website
WIKOOP-INFRA – Hamburg
Ensuring the robustness of scientific cooperation with China: Study of the analytical research infrastructure
China has emerged as one of the leading superpowers in research and innovation. The unique analytical research infrastructures there are of utmost interest to foreign scientists. However, the challenges in collaborating with China are manifold. The WIKOOP-INFRA collaborative project focuses on analysing four key issues that can lead to barriers, frictions and conflicts and potentially hinder trustful cooperation: Reciprocal access to research infrastructures and data, research integrity, IP rights and technology transfer, and dual use. The aim of the project is to develop empirically based guidelines that will provide actors from Germany and the EU with more guidance and certainty of action on sensitive issues in cooperation with China in large-scale equipment research.
Contact:
- Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY) and German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA)
- Project Management: Dr. Marcus Conlé
