On July 5, 2018, the Department of Innovation and Development, Department of International Cooperation and Department of Personnel jointly organized a lecture on creating new drivers of growth amid economic restructuring. Dr. Marcin Piatkowski, senior economist from the World Bank, was invited to deliver a report. The event was moderated by Zhang Xu, Deputy Director General of the Department of Innovation and Development, and attended by more than 200 participants from MOST and institutions under its jurisdiction.
The report on creating new drivers of growth amid economic restructuring to be released at the end of this year is an important outcome of a two-year joint research project undertaken by the World Bank and the Development Research Center of the State Council. Dr. Marcin Piatkowski is responsible for research into innovation-related parts of the report. In his lecture, Dr. Marcin Piatkowski used humorous language, rich data and interesting cases to analyze the achievements and challenges of China‘s STI development and offered suggestions for further development from a WB perspective. He also shared the experience of the United States, Britain, Poland and other countries. He said that while China has accomplished outstanding achievements in STI, it also faces many difficulties and challenges, including enterprises’ weaknesses in patent innovation, inadequate monitoring and evaluation of innovation policies and S&T programs and uneven regional development of innovation. Dr. Marcin Piatkowski suggested that China should include bottom-up and market-driven innovation policies in its innovation policy design, so as to maximize the adoption of innovative and creative ideas from all kinds of enterprises and encourage localities to conduct innovative explorations and practices. As for fiscal expenditure on science and technology, he recommended that China should invest more in R&D and strengthen the evaluation of public expenditure efficiency. As for monitoring and evaluation, his recommendation was that China should strengthen evaluation of innovation policies, S&T programs and public research institutes’performance, so as to improve the overall environment for innovation.
This lecture has been responded actively by the audience. In the Q&A session, participants from MOST engaged in in-depth discussion and exchanges of views with Dr. Marcin Piatkowski on innovation policy implementation, monitoring enhancement and independent innovation capacity improvement. Meanwhile, Dr. Marcin Piatkowski expressed the hope of strengthening cooperation between the World Bank and MOST. The lecture is of great significance to helping examine the status quo of innovation-driven development in China from an international perspective, learning about success stories of international science and technology management policies and improving the science and technology management system.