Spatial differences of foreign capital R&D networks in China: quantitative analysis based on dissipative structure...

China's foreign capital R&D network has become a core component of the high-quality development of the national innovation ecosystem. Narrowing the spatial difference in the foreign R&D network is considered an essential strategy to improve China's holistic innovation capability. Previous studies only examined the internal factors of the system while mostly ignoring the quantitative analysis of the spatial differences diffusion. Based on the dissipative structure theory, the current paper demonstrates the construction of positive and negative entropy indexes of foreign capital R&D networks in China. Rested on a survey dataset of 340 foreign R&D institutions in 21 Chinese provinces from 2016 to 2017, this paper analyzes the spatial differences and driving factors of the innovation development of foreign capital R&D networks across the country using the Brusselator model. The results show that China's entire deviation degree of foreign capital R&D networks is small. Still, there are significant spatial differences in the deviation between the entropy value and the ideal status of dissipative structure in foreign R&D networks, with the minor deviation-value areas located in the eastern regions. In addition, the central and western regions where the late-mover layout of the foreign R&D network deviates are far from the ideal status. Among them, the western (i.e., Xi'an and Chengdu) foreign R&D network is significantly better than the central innovation performance. It is found that policy traction of talent advantage and intellectual property rights protection positively impact the negative entropy flow of foreign R&D networks in China, which becomes an influential driving force for the future system equilibrium. The paper concludes with several policy implications to guide China's innovation and ecological optimization of foreign capital R&D networks.