Evolution and governance of the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry of China

The high-speed growth of China's biotechnology industry during the past 20 years presents an excellent opportunity to examine its overall evaluation and governance from the perspective of science and technology policies. Although China's biotechnology industry has achieved tremendous extension both in scale and structure, the strengths it has gained from achievements in research and development activities have been significantly weakened in relation to processes of commercialization. After examining the definition of China's biotechnology industry as well as its evolution, the authors of this paper employ Actor-Networks Theory as a basic theoretical framework to reveal how China's biotechnology industry develops in the form of evolving networks within the country's social context and to identify what kinds of relationships exist among the relevant factors. Our hope is to provide guiding insights for improving the governance of China's biotechnology industry both in policy and in management practices.

[1]  Jeremy Hunsinger,et al.  The Science Studies Reader , 2002 .

[2]  Jacqueline Senker,et al.  National systems of innovation, organizational learning and industrial biotechnology , 1996 .

[3]  J. Needham,et al.  Science and Civilisation in China. , 1955 .

[4]  Xielin Liu,et al.  Organizational processes to meet new performance criteria: Chinese pharmaceutical firms in transition , 1998 .

[5]  Sharmistha Bagchi-Sen,et al.  An analysis of firm-level innovation strategies in the US biotechnology industry , 2007 .

[6]  J. Needham,et al.  Science and Civilisation in China , 1955 .

[7]  Y Jiang,et al.  Chinese pharmaceutical companies: an emerging industry. , 2001, Drug discovery today.

[8]  Susanne Giesecke,et al.  The contrasting roles of government in the development of biotechnology industry in the US and Germany , 2000 .

[9]  Benoît Godin,et al.  National Innovation System , 2009 .

[10]  Wen Ke,et al.  Health biotechnology in China—reawakening of a giant , 2004, Nature Biotechnology.

[11]  Alan L. Porter,et al.  Making Sense of Science , 2010 .

[12]  Anthony Arundel,et al.  OECD Biotechnology Statistics 2009 , 2006 .

[13]  D Schwartzman.  "Innovation in the Pharmaceutical Industry". , 1978, British medical journal.

[14]  B. Williams-Jones,et al.  Actor-Network Theory: a tool to support ethical analysis of commercial genetic testing , 2003, New genetics and society.

[15]  W. Powell,et al.  Interorganizational Collaboration and the Locus of Innovation: Networks of Learning in Biotechnology. , 1996 .

[16]  The Implications of WTO Accession on the Pharmaceutical Industry in China , 2002 .

[17]  M. Callon,et al.  Mapping the Dynamics of Science and Technology , 1986 .

[18]  V. Moses,et al.  Biotechnology: The Science and the Business , 1991 .

[19]  G. Pisano.  The governance of innovation: Vertical integration and collaborative arrangements in the biotechnology industry☆ , 1991 .