Industiral and Technological Catch-Up and Global Competition: the EU and China compared with US Since 2001

Details

Supervisors

Defraigne, Jean-Christophe

Faculty

Louvain School of Management

Degree label

Master de spécialisation en entreprises et politiques économiques européennes

Abstract

Industrial and technological competition has become one of the important issues of global politics and economy in the 21st century. For a long time, the United States has maintained an economic and technological leadership in the global value chain with its first-mover advantage in key industries and technology. At the same time, since joining the WTO in 2001, China has made remarkable progress in industrialization and technological upgrading and has gradually grown into an important global technology competitor. The improvement of the national coordination capacity, the expansion of the scale of the manufacturing industry and the continuous promotion of industrial upgrading have jointly promoted this development process. In contrast, although the European Union still has a strong industrial foundation and strong scientific research strength, its competitive advantage is facing increasingly severe challenges in the new technological competition environment. Based on this background, the core question of this article is: Since 2001, why has China's progress in industrial and technological catch-up surpassed that of the European Union, while the technological frontier represented by the United States has continued to maintain a leading position? This article believes that this difference is not only related to the ability to innovate itself, but also closely related to the interaction between national capabilities, policy coordination, industrial ecosystems and dynamic mechanisms to promote the continuous accumulation of technology. With the intensification of global value chain competition, whether an economy can effectively integrate institutional resources, industrial capabilities and technological innovation resources is becoming an important factor affecting its long-term technological competitiveness. To analyze the above problems, this paper adopts the research perspective of comparative political economy and builds a multi-level analysis framework including macro system, medium-view industrial structure, cumulative dynamic mechanism and technical achievements. The full text is divided into three main parts: the first chapter introduces the research background, literature review, research problems and research methods; the second chapter builds a theoretical analysis framework and explains the relationship between the main research variables; the third chapter uses the framework to compare and analyze the development path of the United States, China and the European Union; finally, the conclusion part is general It summarizes the main research results and further explores its significance for understanding industrial and technological competition in contemporary global political economy.