Cong Cao’s research while affiliated with University of Nottingham Ningbo China and other places

Cities are increasingly leveraging collaborative networks to boost innovation. However, not all cities within a network benefit equally. To explain the cross-city differences in innovation performance, we argue that, ceteris paribus, a focal city’s indirect partners—cities collaborating directly with the focal city’s direct partners but not directly with the focal city—exhibit dual effects. They relationally compete against the focal city for direct partners’ collaborative resources, thereby reducing the focal city’s likelihood of benefiting from the network. They also technologically complement the focal city’s knowledge base, thus not only directly helping its innovation performance but also increasing its collaboration with direct partners. We also argue that the dual effects are contingent upon characteristics of the focal city’s direct partners: they intensify when the direct partners occupy positions of high centrality within the network and when public research organizations constitute a large share of the direct partners’ local innovation actors. We further posit that the indirect partners’ dual effects and their contingency upon direct partners are subject to intellectual property rights protection of the region wherein the focal city locates. We tested our hypotheses with China’s inter-city collaborative network, which we built on patents co-filed by Chinese applicants from different cities over 2007–2019. Fixed-effects negative binomial and ordinary least squares analyses largely supported our hypotheses, with three unexpected granular insights. Our study enriches the network literature by revealing the overlooked yet profound roles that indirect partners play in a city’s innovation activities.

Frontier scientific discoveries increasingly rely on big-science research infrastructures, such as supercolliders, synchrotron light sources, and space telescopes, whose construction and operation involve intensive international collaboration. This collaborative nature, however, presents a challenge in balancing national interests with the common good, particularly given the substantial fiscal investments involved. This study investigates the effects of one of China’s prominent big-science infrastructures, the Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility (SSRF), on the country’s production of science, differentiating between national and international scientific endeavors. Employing a rigorous difference-in-differences (DID) methodology, it evaluates SSRF’s effects on discipline-level production of publications by domestic researchers and those involving international collaboration. The empirical findings reveal compelling evidence that SSRF has significantly enhanced the production of high-impact national and international publications for disciplines reliant on the facility for experiments, particularly increasing the percentage of high-impact national publications. The findings also underscore the dual role of big-science infrastructures in fostering international research collaboration while simultaneously enhancing nations’ domestic scientific development and competitiveness. Additionally, the study provides valuable insights for research assessment and science policy discussions.

Using novel monthly air passenger traffic data, we assess the impact of U.S.-China tensions on people in flows from China to the U.S. We find that there was a 6 percent decline in air passenger flows from China to the U.S. compared to other source countries during the period between 2017 and 2019. When differentiated by geographical locations, relative to other U.S. airports, U.S. airports near universities with a significant presence of Chinese students are found to have experienced a more than 10 percent annual drop in passengers originating from China. A further investigation reveals that the decline in people in flows is mainly attributed to the loss of passenger arrivals in August and that this decline is consistently more significant than the decrease experienced by airports near tourist destinations during the same period. These findings provide updated evidence of the detrimental effect a hostile political climate could have on international people mobility between two major scientific powers.

The Nobel Prize is a prestigious award for outstanding contributions in different fields of science. However, the issue of how Nobel laureates stand out from all nominees remains a “black box” to be explored. Using data on nominees and nominators for the prizes in physics, chemistry, and physiology or medicine from 1901 to 1950, in this study, the influences of the academic impact of a nominee’s research, social identities of nominators, and the interaction between the two factors on the nominee’s chance of winning were explored. The main determinants for a nominee to receive a Nobel Prize include the academic impact as measured by using L-index and h-index, and nominators’ academic identity. However, significant disciplinary differences exist in terms of the influences of such factors. In physics, a nominee’s L-index showed a very significant and positive effect, and nominators’ administrative identity was helpful, and also their interactions. In chemistry, a nominee’s h-index, as well as a nominator’s administrative identity and academic identity, were all significant, and similar to physics, interactions between L-index and administrative identity could also increase a nominee’s probability of winning the prize. In physiology or medicine, nominee’s h-index and nominators’ academic identity were of great concern, and when a nominee with a high h-index was nominated by a nominator with a high academic identity, the nominee’s chance of being awarded was observed to be increased.

There are a variety of reasons underlying the remarkable development of science and technology (S&T), and innovation in post-1978 China. This book seeks to achieve an understanding of such development from an institutional or a political economy perspective. Departing from the literature of S&T and innovation studies that treats innovation as a market or enterprise's behavior in Schumpeter's sense, Sun and Cao argue that it involves politics, institutions, and the role of the state. In particular, they examine how the Chinese state has played its visible role in making innovation policies, allocating funding for R&D programs, making efforts to attract talent, and organizing critical S&T programs. This book appeals to scholars in S&T and innovation policy, political economy, innovation governance, and China studies as well as policymakers and business executives.