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4754The “Belt and Road” is a path of innovation, and sci-tech cooperation is the forerunner and support of B&R construction. However, what are the main patterns of cooperation? What are the mechanism and effect acting on the economic growth of countries along B&R? How to improve the quality and effect of cooperation? All these questions are worth to discuss in order to build B&R sci-tech cooperation network and B&R Community of Innovation. Although existing researches have made extensive analysis and research, there are still two shortcomings. First, most of them focus on the patterns of B&R sci-tech cooperation, but pay little attention to the mechanism and effect. Second, there is little empirical evidence on sci-tech cooperation promoting economic growth in countries along B&R.
This paper attempts to make a comprehensive analysis on the above questions. And it finds that the sci-tech cooperation between countries along B&R and China is at its initial stage, mostly carried out by China’s neighbor such as Southeast Asian and South Asian countries, and is narrowed in cooperation scope. All kinds of cooperation can be classified as R&D cooperation and technology transfer, which promote the economic growth of countries along B&R by affecting R&D ability and knowledge stock respectively, and have different effects on countries with different technological endowment. The economic growth effects of R&D cooperation and technology transfer are mutually reinforcing. Therefore, carrying out the two types of cooperation simultaneously can promote the innovation and growth effects greatly. If countries along B&R are divided into innovation laggards and innovation pursuers, the effect of R&D cooperation is obviously different between the two groups, which is related to the technical level and difficulty of cooperation. It is also related to the direct productivity effect of technology transfer. Therefore, we can get the inspiration that B&R sci-tech cooperation should adopt different strategies in different countries according to the actual conditions, stick to the parallel development of R&D cooperation and technology transfer, and emphasize the technological endowment and quality of R&D cooperation.
This paper adds to the existing literature in the following two ways: First, in terms of cooperation mechanism, it divides the existing patterns of B&R sci-tech cooperation into two categories: R&D cooperation in order to enhance the R&D capabilities of related countries, and technology transfer in order to increase their knowledge stock. Second, in terms of R&D conditions, this paper divides the related countries into two groups: backward countries and catch-up countries, investigates and compares B&R sci-tech cooperation’s effects on the economic growth in different group countries, and gives suggestion on how to improve sci-tech cooperation accordingly.
