ABSTRACT
Developing countries need their industry base to be linked to the local as well as to the global science and technology (S&T) system in order to make full use of their indigenous development potential and to facilitate technological upgrading (Metcalfe and Ramlogan 2008). China is especially eager to move its capacity towards indigenous innovation and promotes its industrial development with a multi-faceted technology policy that includes research, science and development (Fan and Watanabe 2006; Hennemann and Kroll 2008; Wu 2007). The biotech industry, and the research activity in this science-driven sector in particular, is seen as being highly concentrated in several global spots and largely organized in epistemic communities that act on a global scale, rather than creating and utilizing ‘local buzz’ (Moodysson 2008; Cooke 2009). Consequently, knowledge dissemination processes are assumed to be organized in a hierarchical fashion, with the most highly ranked organizations circulating knowledge among themselves and, at later stages, passing over knowledge to subordinate levels (cf. Hennemann 2010).
