National Innovation Systems and Regional Cooperation in Asia: Challenges and Strategies from a Study of China

I provide a quick assessment of the effectiveness and potentialities of National Innovation Systems (NIS) in the Asia-Pacific for deeper economic integration. To this end,I formulate some preliminary policy suggestions aimed at enhancing the region’s overall innovation strategy. My approach focuses particularly on the evolving relationship between China's NIS and the Asia-Pacific region with some references to Japan, Korea, Taiwan, India, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia. I argue that while the policy challenges for regional cooperation are far from trivial, strengthening the NIS and the various sub- regional systems with a view to building up a broad-based and inclusive Regional Innovation System(RIS) for the Asia-Pacific can be a substantive area of enhancing economic integration in the Asia-Pacific . Conceptually, the paper presents an enhanced view of NIS for inclusive growth. I call this new model of regional innovation an “Augmented NIS(ANIS)”. The attempt to build ANIS is one conceptually and practically sound approach towards enhancing economic integration in the Asia-Pacific. Three areas of concrete applications are suggested in the concluding part.