Douglas Zhihua Zeng

Knowledge, technology, and cluster-based growth in Africa

Although Africa is falling behind in todays global economic race, it holds pockets of vital economic activity -- many in the form of enterprise clusters scattered across the continents countries and industries. By clustering, enterprises are able to overcome constraints in capital, skills, technology, and markets. Enterprise clusters help their constituents grow and compete by encouraging more effective knowledge and technology diffusion and product specialization, leveraging local comparative advantage, fostering production value chains, and achieving collective efficiency. In so doing, they contribute significantly to Africas economic growth. They provide jobs for the continents growing population, thus enabling families not only to survive, but also to educate their children and perhaps move out of poverty. But in todays increasingly knowledge-intensive and globalized economy, these clusters also face serious challenges in the areas of technology, natural resources, infrastructure, skill acquisition, and quality control. This book aims to provide an understanding of how these dynamic enterprise clusters in Africa were formed and have evolved, and how knowledge, human capital, and technology have contributed to their success.

Promoting enterprise-led innovation in China

China has made remarkable gains in industrialization and development. Over the past three decades, it has maintained gross domestic product (GDP) growth of about 9 percent per year and lifted more than 400 million people out of poverty. Entering the 21st century, China is determined to ensure the sustainability of its economic and social development, to which the innovativeness of business enterprises is critical. In 2006, the government of China laid out a strategy of enterprise-led indigenous innovation. In implementing this strategy, Chinese enterprises must cope with two severe challenges arising from the current stage of development. First, they must derive their competitiveness increasingly from innovativeness. Second, while they are innovating, they must also create jobs to keep the Chinese labor force employed. The realization of Chinas vision to promote enterprise-led innovation will entail concerted actions by government, the corporate sector, and the financial sector. What can the government do? The four basic recommendations of this report are to pursue a balanced strategy, to create the right incentives, to build the capacity of the private sector, and to strengthen the ecosystem for the venture capital (VC) industry.

Enhancing China's competitiveness through lifelong learning

This study emphasizes that in response to demands for wider access and better quality of education, and to achieve economies of scale and leverage limited resources, China needs to develop a more integrated system of education and training with appropriate bridges and interfaces among its various constituents. This book outlines the key elements of such a system, focusing primarily on its economic aspects. It presents a framework to help identify and understand the demands being placed on the education and training system and the services that various education providers can supply, highlighting several policy approaches to building an effective and efficient lifelong learning system. These include changing the role of government from being the main provider of education and training to being the architect, facilitator, and rule-keeper for a more inclusive system. In this scenario, government would ensure quality, relevance, efficiency, and equity through sound accreditation, assessment, and vocational qualification systems, stronger linkages with the labor market, partnerships with nongovernmental players, and better resource allocation and financial aid programs. It would also provide information services for all stake-holders, develop an education finance market, tap into private resources to meet the increasing demand for education and training, and harness the potential of distance education.

China and the Knowledge Economy : Challenges and Opportunities

The rapid pace of economic growth in China has been unprecedented since the start of economic reforms in late 1970s. It has delivered higher incomes and made the largest single contribution to global poverty reduction. Measured by international poverty lines, from 1978-2004, the absolute poor population in rural areas has dropped from 250 million to 26.1 million. Such gains are impressive and have been driven largely by a set of market-oriented institutional reforms, strong investment, and effective adoption and application of various knowledge and technologies, especially foreign ones through trade and foreign direct investment. While enjoying tremendous success, China also faces many challenges that need to be addressed to sustain its long-term development. These include weak institutions, low overall educational attainment, weak indigenous innovation capacity, poor links between research and development and industries, and so on. This paper provides an analysis of some strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and challenges to Chinas knowledge economy in the areas of economic incentives and institutional regime, human capital, innovation system, and information infrastructure.

China's employment challenges and strategies after the WTO accession

Although China has made impressive progress in economic development and improving social well-being, it is facing many daunting challenges while transforming toward a knowledge and service-based economy and further opening up to international competition after its WTO accession in the context of knowledge revolution. One of the biggest challenges is how to create 100-300 million new jobs in the coming decade to absorb the millions of laid-offs, rural emigrants an d newly added labor force. China has been successful in building high-tech parks and ICT industries, but they are limited in terms of employment generation, while most of the traditional labor-intensive industries are losing competitiveness due to low productivity. In order to combat the unprecedented employment challenge, China must implement a systemic and sustained strategy, which may consist of the following policy thrusts: encouraging the private sector; promoting small and medium enterprises; expanding the service sector; reforming the state-owned enterprises; strengthening the social security system; improving labor market flexibility; and establishing mass retraining programs.

CHINA'S SPECIAL ECONOMIC ZONES AND INDUSTRIAL CLUSTERS: THE ENGINES FOR GROWTH

The numerous special economic zones (SEZs) and industrial clusters that emerged after the countrys reforms are without doubt two important engines of Chinas remarkable development. However, after 30 years of development, they also face many significant challenges in moving forward. This paper summarizes the development experiences of Chinas SEZs and industrial clusters (their formation, success factors, challenges, and possible areas or measures for policy intervention), based on case studies, interviews, field visits, and extensive reviews of the existing literature in an attempt to benefit other developing countries.

Global Experiences of Special Economic Zones with Focus on China and Africa: Policy Insights

This paper briefly summarizes the development experiences of special economic zones (SEZs) in China and Africa (especially the Sub-Saharan Africa), the lessons that Africa can learn from China, and the preliminary results of the Chinese investments in SEZs in Africa. The study makes recommendations on how to unleash the power of SEZs and industrial parks in Africa through strategically leveraging the Chinese experiences. While the Chinese experiences with SEZs and industrial parks are generally successful, Africas experience has been relatively poor. Moving forward, they can greatly benefit from the Chinese experiences, especially the Chinese zones in Africa.