How to develop high-tech industries in countries with weak intellectual property protection? -Theoretical and empirical evidence from high-tech enterprises in China.

As we all know, the protection of intellectual property rights in China is not good. According to the Intellectual Property Protection Index of Asian countries and regions published by Hong Kong Political & Economic Risk Consulting Company, China ranks second from the bottom among Asian countries and regions, only better than Indonesia; according to the legal index published by the World Bank, one part of this legal index is the status of intellectual property protection, and China ranks 95th among 195 countries, which is lower than the world average. Theoretically, in areas where intellectual property protection is so weak, the willingness of enterprises to invest in R&D should be weak. Surprisingly, however, China is an out-and-out "R&D country"-according to the report of the World Economic Cooperation Organization, in 2006, the total R&D expenditure of China enterprises ranked third in the world after the United States and Japan, and the growth rate of R&D expenditure of China enterprises ranked first in the world from 2002 to 2006; According to the survey of the World Investment Report of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development in 2005, China has surpassed all countries and regions and become the first choice for major multinational companies to invest in R&D in the world. In a country where intellectual property protection is so weak, how to realize the rapid development of high-tech industry? Are China enterprises different? Don't they need a strong intellectual property legal system to protect their advanced technology and innovative products? Or is there any other mechanism to support the activities of China enterprises in R&D instead of intellectual property protection? These are the two main questions to be answered in this paper. In order to answer the first question, we investigate whether the different enforcement of intellectual property protection in different provinces has affected the financing, R&D investment and R&D output of high-tech enterprises in different provinces through provincial comparative analysis. The results show that (1) in the provinces with strong enforcement of intellectual property protection, high-tech enterprises are more likely to obtain various external financing: external debt financing, debt financing of informal financial institutions and external equity financing, and are more willing to invest a larger proportion of funds in R&D activities and develop more patented technologies and new products. (2) Although our above results show that there is a positive correlation between the enforcement of intellectual property rights and the financing ability and R&D ability of high-tech enterprises, is there a factor that we ignore, which not only improves the level of intellectual property protection, but also improves the development level of high-tech enterprises, thus leading to a "pseudo-correlation" relationship between the level of intellectual property protection, high-tech borrowing ability and R&D ability? For this problem, if we explore the mechanism of intellectual property protection on high-tech borrowing ability and R&D ability, it is obvious that the relationship between them is causal rather than "pseudo-correlation". The author designs an empirical test and finds that intellectual property protection affects the investment and financing behavior of high-tech enterprises through the following three mechanisms: first, intellectual property protection reduces the "externality problem" that the company's technology is easily copied and stolen by competitors; Second, the protection of intellectual property rights reduces the "information asymmetry problem", that is, the company is unwilling to disclose information to external investors, so as to avoid the information of R&D projects being leaked, which leads to financing difficulties; Third, intellectual property protection can also reduce the "agency problem" of Sino-foreign joint ventures-Chinese shareholders are likely to use advanced technology provided by foreign shareholders for other purposes, which makes the latter reluctant to transfer technology to joint ventures. The above research results answer the first question of this paper: intellectual property protection plays a role in the investment and financing behavior of domestic high-tech enterprises. However, even though the overall level of intellectual property protection in China is still backward, it seems that foreign high-tech enterprises should not regard China as the first choice for R&D investment. Because unlike domestic enterprises, foreign-funded enterprises can choose to invest in R&D in other countries with strong intellectual property protection. Therefore, the author concludes that there may be other mechanisms to replace the protection of intellectual property rights and attract foreign high-tech enterprises to invest in R&D in China. We believe that social capital may be a very important alternative mechanism. The classic definition of social capital in the field of economics comes from LLSV( 1997): "People tend to cooperate in a society, that is, in a society with high social capital, people tend to maximize social efficiency through cooperation, instead of mutual suspicion and mutual calculation leading to the inefficiency of the' prisoner's dilemma'." Knack and Keefer( 1997) further emphasized that social capital includes social mutual trust, social morality and team spirit. LLSV( 1997) Based on the data of the World Values Survey, it is found that China has a very high level of social capital and social mutual trust, ranking among the top 40 major developed countries and developing China countries in the world. Allen, Qian and Qian(2005) further pointed out that, unlike the West, China's high social mutual trust is mainly influenced by the mainstream culture of China society for thousands of years-Confucian culture. Their further questionnaire survey of China business owners also shows that 65,438+0,000% of business owners think that if the enterprise goes bankrupt, any economic loss is not as important as the loss of credit and reputation. It can be seen that in a relational society like China, keeping promises is highly valued. If a country's social capital is high and people's integrity and public morality are strong, then even if the intellectual property protection system is not perfect, people in that country are unlikely to infringe on the intellectual property rights of others, so social capital can be used as an important mechanism to attract foreign high-tech enterprises. In order to test this mechanism, we investigated the influence of the difference of social capital level in different provinces on the investment behavior of foreign-funded high-tech enterprises. Our main conclusions are as follows: (1) After controlling the economic development level, legal protection level, government integrity level, financial development level, same industry intensity, upstream and downstream industry intensity, infrastructure construction, salary level, human resource richness and policy preference of each province, it is easier for provinces with higher social capital to attract foreign high-tech enterprises. Moreover, in provinces with high social capital, foreign-funded high-tech enterprises are more willing to form joint ventures with local enterprises and have stronger willingness to invest in R&D. (2) In provinces with high social capital, the R&D intensity of foreign-funded high-tech enterprises is increasing year by year; On the contrary, in provinces with low social capital, the R&D intensity of foreign-funded high-tech enterprises is declining year by year. This result is consistent with our theoretical prediction, indicating that foreign-funded high-tech enterprises gradually understand local social capital, gradually accumulate experience, and gradually respond to the integrity of local people. These results answer the second question of this paper: in countries with weak intellectual property protection, social capital can play a role in replacing intellectual property protection. In addition, in order to understand the mechanism of social capital more clearly, we also investigated how the social capital and national culture of the country of origin of foreign investors affect the social capital effect of the investing country (China). We draw the following conclusions: (1) If foreign high-tech enterprises come from countries and regions with high social capital, they will pay more attention to the integrity of their partners and employees, so they will choose to invest in R&D in regions with high social capital. (2) If foreign-funded high-tech enterprises come from countries and regions with very different cultural backgrounds in China, foreign investors are very unfamiliar with China's investment environment due to cultural differences, so in order to reduce risks, they will also choose to invest in provinces with high social capital. (3) Investors from high-risk aversion countries and regions also rely on the social capital level of the investment areas to a greater extent. (4) Compared with foreign investors in other countries, the investment decisions of foreign investors with China blood are less dependent on the level of social capital in the investment areas, because they can use other mechanisms, such as the governance mechanism based on relationship and reputation, to deal with the dishonest behavior of local people. (5) It is still difficult for both sides who have been at war in history to forget hatred. The more countries and regions that have bad relations with China in history, the less willing investors are to establish joint ventures with China enterprises and engage in R&D activities in China. Every time the number of wars between these countries and China has increased since the Opium War, the probability of establishing joint ventures between investors of the two countries has decreased by 3.2%, and the R&D intensity of high-tech enterprises from these countries in China has decreased by 0.6%. These research results expand the research of the new field of "culture and finance" in many ways. The full text is divided into six chapters, and the main contents of each chapter are as follows: The first chapter is the introduction. This paper mainly introduces the research ideas and analysis framework of the paper. Specifically, it includes: research background, research problems, research ideas, research content, research improvement and innovation, etc. The second chapter is literature review and theoretical analysis. "Intellectual property protection and enterprise financing" and "social capital and enterprise financing" are interdisciplinary fields. At present, there is little literature in this field. Using the theories and methods of economics, finance and sociology, the author analyzes and expounds the mechanism of intellectual property protection and social capital on financial decisions of high-tech enterprises, such as financing, R&D investment, R&D output, investment region selection and equity structure selection. The third chapter analyzes the institutional background. First of all, it introduces the main existing laws and regulations on intellectual property rights in China, and the international conventions on intellectual property rights signed by the China government and relevant international organizations. Then we discussed the differences of intellectual property law enforcement in different provinces of China. Finally, we analyze the differences of social capital levels in different countries (regions) and provinces in China. The fourth chapter studies the influence of intellectual property protection on external financing, R&D investment and R&D output of high-tech enterprises in China, and specifically tests three mechanisms of intellectual property protection on investment and financing decision-making of high-tech enterprises. The fifth chapter studies the influence of social capital on the regional choice, ownership structure and R&D investment of foreign-funded high-tech enterprises, and then discusses how the social capital and national culture of the country of origin of foreign-funded high-tech enterprises affect the social capital effect of the investing country. The sixth chapter is a summary of the research results of this paper, including research conclusions and enlightenment.