全球创新格局演变视角下中国海外知识获取的空间分布与影响因素研究

Overseas knowledge acquisition has always been a very important way for peripheral countries to achieve innovation development. As China is increasingly integrated into the global innovation networks, overseas knowledge acquisition has become a vital channel for China to enhance its innovation capabilities. However, the relevant research does little work to reveal the geographical distribution and influencing factors of China's overseas knowledge acquisition, especially under the influence of the ever-changing global innovation landscape. Employing the PATSTAT database to obtain the information of overseas inventor-domestic applicant relationship, this paper describes the changing of global innovation landscape and China's innovation status at different stages, aiming to explore the process of China's shift from periphery country to the core country; meanwhile, it analyzes the relationship between the evolution of the global innovation landscape and China's overseas knowledge acquisition by using GMM model. The results show that: (1) The global innovation landscape is mainly led by North America and Western Europe. With the rising importance of East Asia, China is the only country that has leaped from the periphery to the core in global innovation networks so far. (2) China's overseas knowledge acquisition is characterized by dispersion at the large scale and agglomeration at the small scale. To be specific, it is not only highly concentrated in the excellent centers of North America, Western Europe and East Asia, but also shows a tendency to spread in peripheral countries along the Belt and Road. (3) The geographical distribution of China's overseas knowledge acquisition is mainly affected by the innovation status of the host country, and influenced by the evolution of the global innovation landscape differently at each stage. When China emerges as a peripheral country or a semi-peripheral country in the global innovation landscape, the acquisition of overseas knowledge is respectively affected by the core country and semi-peripheral country; while China becomes a core country in the global innovation landscape, China's overseas knowledge acquisition is mainly positively affected by the country in the core and semi-periphery. We argue this study enriches the existing research on the global innovation landscape and the growth path of peripheral countries.