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Keywords

world science center; comprehensive national science center; four quadrant; double circulation; S&T innovation

Abstract

Science and technology have become the key variables that influencing and changing the global competition pattern. In order to strengthen the strategic scientific and technological power of China, the Chinese government has decided to build the Comprehensive National Science Center. Although the construction practices of the Comprehensive National Science Center are in full swing, there is lacks enough theoretical discussion on this topic, especially regarding the construction logic and path. This study has reviewed the extant literature on the transfer of world science centers and the comprehensive national science centers, and then we put forward an improved fourquadrant model according to the two-dimensional quadrant model proposed by Brookings Institution. Based on the improved four-quadrant model proposed in this study, we first classify and compare the construction contents of the four comprehensive national science centers under construction in China. The four comprehensive national science centers are Huairou, Zhangjiang, Hefei, and Greater Bay Area, respectively. The construction contents involved include large scientific device clusters, national laboratories, cross-cutting frontier research platforms, industrial innovation centers, enterprises, universities, research institutions, etc. Then, this study defines the connotation of the comprehensive national science center after summarizing existing research on it and emphasizes the three aspects of the concept of the comprehensive national science center. For example, the first aspect is that we highlight the nature of scientific research in comprehensive national science centers. The second one is that we define the comprehensiveness of the comprehensive national science centers. And the last is that we point out that the comprehensive national science centers are the science and technology innovation ecosystem with the collection of major science and technology innovation resources. Third, we proposed the functions the comprehensive national science center, which include two core functions (basic scientific research and technology scientific research) and two derived functions (application technology development; talent training and science popularization). Among them, basic scientific research pursues knowledge innovation of scientific discovery; technology scientific research emphasizes application principal innovation based on scientific discovery; application technology development is an industrial technology innovation based on new knowledge and new principles; and the scientific spirit of personnel training and science and technology dissemination leads. We further put forward the ‘four quadrants and double circulation’ construction logic of the comprehensive national science center. In this part, we emphasize the theoretical value of the ‘four quadrants and double circulation’ by explaining the roles of ‘four quadrants’ and ‘double circulation’ respectively. The division of the four quadrants of the comprehensive national science center is mainly to define its functions. And the double circulation of the comprehensive national science center is to clarify the internal logical relations of the four quadrants. Finally, this study tries to give five specific practical implications on the construction path of the comprehensive national science center in terms of the construction entity, construction content, construction logic, guarantee of the construction, and operations after successfully constructed. These suggestions aim to get through the internal logic of basic scientific research, technological scientific research, technological research and development, technological commercialization, talent training and scientific popularization, which ultimately provides a reference for the construction of the comprehensive national science center in China.

DOI

10.16315/j.stm.2024.03.007

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