ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with a balance sheet of arguments for the China optimists and pessimists, since this serves the dual purpose of providing an introductory outline to the Chinese innovation system and debate thereon and, as importantly, its paradoxes and conceptual challenges. Optimists have a huge and growing body of evidence, often quantitative, on which to draw in arguing for China's imminent global strength in innovation. The Communist Party of China (CCP)'s current project, since 1992 and with ever-increasing emphasis on innovation in recent years, is to oversee and orchestrate – and then peremptorily take credit for – the rise to global leadership of Chinese innovation and enterprise, thereby securing the twin existential imperatives of the People's Republic of China (PRC), namely: the PRC's relative independence and sovereignty in its foreign affairs; and the continuing monopoly of legitimate organization and state power of the CCP at home.
