This chapter reviews China’s engagement with the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) in the past twenty years. It begins by highlighting TRIPS-related developments in the first decade of China’s WTO membership. The chapter then discusses the country’s ‘innovative turn’ in the mid-2000s and the ramifications of its changing policy positions. This chapter continues to examine the US-China trade war, in particular the second TRIPS complaint that the United States filed against China in March 2018. It concludes with observations about the impact of the TRIPS Agreement on China, China’s impact on that agreement and how the changing Chinese intellectual property landscape has altered developing countries’ coalitional dynamics within the WTO.

Our final chapter concludes the book by summarizing the findings from our studies of the political economy of S&T and innovation in China, discussing tensions faced by China through the perspective of the political economy in the studies of S&T and innovation in China, and drawing some governance implications for the political economic study of China’s S&T and innovation in general.

The extent and speed with which China has captured gains from R&D internationalization sets the country apart from other emerging economies and has furthered its aspirations to upgrade from innovation follower to innovation leader. In this chapter, we discuss how the internationalization of China’s industrial R&D has evolved in the interplay between firm strategies, domestic government policies and international policies and regimes. First, we outline the development of China’s R&D internationalization, identifying its major drivers and motives. Second, we link this to China’s broader domestic and international political economy: its growth model, domestic S&T upgrading (e.g., the Made in China 2025 plan), firm-level internationalization (e.g., in the Belt and Road Initiative), and the emergence of more restrictive inward FDI regimes in Western countries. Finally, we comment on the likely future trajectory of Chinese R&D internationalization against a global backdrop characterized by increasing economic nationalism, trade frictions, and geopolitical security concerns.

Chapter 4 explores the role of government involvement as a driver for innovation and highlights the variety of approaches followed in EMs. The chapter examines this issue through two very distinct case studies. One is the case of State Grid Corporation of China (SGCC), a state-owned company operating in the electricity sector and the fifth-largest firm in the world by revenues. SGCC has rapidly expanded globally, partly thanks to a technology it developed that reduces energy losses during electricity transmission. Its case illustrates the determined and proactive role played by the state to make China an innovation leader in a number of areas. The other is the case of INVAP, an innovation-based state-owned Argentine company that specializes in the production of nuclear reactors and satellites. INVAP and SGCC are just two samples of a greater universe of highly competitive SOEs, that have the capabilities to innovate and grow. Both cases illustrate case how the collaboration of the state and the firm has encouraged internationalization and innovation.