31st Oct, 2016
At the invitation of Management College famous economic professor Keun Lee from Seoul National Universitygave some academic lecturesin CUIT: Technological Regimes, Catch-up and Leapfrogging: Findings from the Korean Industries and Industrial Catch-up in China: A Sectoral Systems of Innovation Perspective. The lecture was held by Professor Li Guiqing, the associate Dean of Management College with the attendance of some teachers, postgraduates and undergraduates.
In the economic catch-up of Korea, Professor Keun Lee first introduced 3 patterns of industrial catch-up: Path-following catch-up, Stage-skipping catch-up and Path-creating catch-up. He enumerated some enterprise catch-up patterns of Korea in D-RAM, automobile and mobile phone industries respectively, and pointed out that catch-up shows in technical capacity and market share: market shares, catch-up mode, technical capacity, frequency of innovation, fluidity of technical trajectory, source for competitive advantages, available knowledge and resources, the role of government and so on, which are the elements of influencing the ability of industrial catch-up in Korea.
In the industrial catch-up of China, he analyzed the Chinese telecommunication equipment and systems, mobile phone, automobiles, memory chips, machine tools and other industries. Through the research he found that mobile phone industry has achieved a rapid catch-up, mobile phone industry has achieved a leapfrogging catch-up, automobile industry grows steady, but slower than IT industry, the catch-up speed of automobile industry is relatively slow, catch-up of machine tool industry is quite slow and steady, and the semiconductor industry overtakes moderately. He found out the important factors which influence the catch-up speed of Chinese firms through comparing the five fields, and further analyzed the influence of catch-up cycle and change frequency of the catch-up effect on the enterprises, and the potential and limitation of Chinese enterprises’ path-following catch-up. At last he analyzed the influence of the government's role and national conditions on the enterprise's catch-up and surpassing.
Professor Keun Lee compared the catch-up model between Chinese and Korean industries and concluded that the development of a country's economy should rely on its own technological innovation while regarding FDI as a means of access to advanced technology and funds. He believes that Chinese market is large enough and the industries have more opportunities to catch up.
Students asked questions actively after the lecture, all the teachers and students had a heated discussion with Prof. Keun Lee on the theory of catch-up and related issues. It enabled students to have more profound understanding of the research prospect and significance of catch-up theory.
