Study of Development of Equipment Manufacturing Industry
WANG Haijun, ZHAO Zichun, WU Weichang
Against the backdrop of profound adjustments in the global economic landscape and the ongoing advancement of the national innovation-driven development strategy, regional innovation ecosystems, as core vehicles for concentrating innovation factors and stimulating innovation vitality, have become a key engine for promoting high-quality regional economic development. China is currently at a critical stage in its transition from factor-driven growth to innovation-driven development, and building sound and well-ordered regional innovation ecosystems has become an important work at both the national and local levels. However, regional innovation ecosystems in China face practical challenges, including ambiguous role definitions of innovation actors, inefficient flows of innovation resources, and highly restrictive innovation environments. Drawing on niche theory, this paper employs the entropy method, niche suitability models, and evolutionary momentum models to conduct a comprehensive evaluation and spatiotemporal analysis of innovation ecosystems across 31 provincial-level regions (excluding Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan) in China from 2020 to 2024. Based on the evaluation results, they can be categorized into 4 types: innovation-leading, steadily catching-up, breakthrough-constrained, and foundation-building. The findings reveal that, the national niche suitability has remained relatively stable from 2020 to 2024. And a pattern has emerged characterized by the eastern regions taking the lead, the central regions providing support, the western regions striving to catch up, and the northern regions undergoing transformation. Further analyses using σ-convergence and β-convergence tests show that while the gap in niche suitability among regions has narrowed to some extent, a widespread catching-up effect has yet to materialize. On this basis, this paper proposes differentiated policy recommendations in three respects:optimizing the structure of innovation actors, promoting the balanced allocation of resources, and improving the environmental support system. These recommendations aim to address the limitations of existing studies that predominantly focus on evaluating partial regions, lack in-depth spatiotemporal analysis, or fail to incorporate timely updates, thereby contributing to the coordinated development and overall upgrading of innovation ecosystems across China.