Regional integration in the inter-city technology transfer system of the Yangtze River Delta, China

Recently, the Chinese government decided to support the integrated development of the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) in a national strategic way. On this background, this paper investigates the regional integration in the technology transfer system of the YRD based on patent transfer from three levels: overall, technology supply chain, and technology sales chain. It also uses the modularity maximization method to detect the community structure of the inter-city patent transfer network in China. The results show that regional integration of the technology transfer system of the YRD at both overall level and technology supply chain level had not been realized up to 2015, but had been achieved at the technical sales chain level. Technology flow in the YRD was increasingly moving across the border, and the intra-region technology transfer network was increasingly unable to meet the needs of technological development of the cities in the YRD. This paper has several limitations concerning the representativeness of patent data, the manifestation of patent data in technological transfer and international comparison.