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This paper examines the emergence of China – now the world’s largest source of scientific publications – in global science from the perspective of the connectivity of its major cities in interurban scientific collaboration networks. We construct collaboration networks between 526 major cities (including 44 Chinese cities) for 2002–2006 and 2014–2018 based on co-publication data drawn from the Web of Science. Both datasets are analyzed using a combination of different centrality measures, which in turn allows assessing the shifting geographies of global science in general and the shifting position of Chinese cities therein in particular. The results show that: (1) on a global scale, the bipolar dominance of Europe and North America has waned in light of the rise of Asia-Pacific and especially China. Most Chinese cities have made significant gains in different centrality measures, albeit that only a handful of cities qualify as world-leading scientific centers. (2) The rise in connectivity of Chinese cities is therefore geographically uneven, as cities along the East Coast and the Yangtze River corridor have become markedly more prominent than cities in other parts of China. The uneven trajectories of Chinese cities can be traced back to changing institutional, economic, and geopolitical contexts. (3) Evolution in the global scientific collaboration network exhibits strong ‘Matthew Effects’, which can be attributed to the path-dependent nature of knowledge production and preferential attachment processes in scientific collaboration.

Firms from different provinces in China and their different reactions to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) are studied in this research. Initial results from 27.547 outward foreign direct investment (FDI) projects by Chinese firms between 2000 and 2015 regarding the home region profile, host country choice, and FDI motives of the investment firms before and in the early years of the launch of the BRI policy are investigated. The findings show that Chinese firms from eastern provinces that have accumulated a large quantity of inward FDI are more likely than firms from western provinces to switch their investments to BRI-involved countries and engage in a more diverse set of outward FDI motives. These findings help interpret the behavior of Chinese multinationals in the current (de)globalization era, namely using the BRI to circumvent FDI barriers imposed by advanced western economies.

It is increasingly emphasized that firms’ innovation depends on external knowledge interaction in the field of economic geography. Global knowledge linkages and interaction plays crucial role in gaining competitive advantage for firms in developing countries because of their immature innovation systems, inspiring a wide academic interest around cross-border knowledge pipelines. However, the existing literature has been silent about the type in which firms employ cross-border knowledge pipelines and neglects the potential importance of firm’s ownership in this process. Using 2015 survey micro-data of 4685 Chinese firms in Zhangjiang National Innovation Demonstration Zone, we investigate how different types of cross-border knowledge pipelines indicated by foreign R&D investment and returnees influence firm’s innovation. The research highlights the positive effects of foreign R&D investment and returnees on firms’ patent innovation, while returnees exerts negative influence on firms’ product innovation. Moreover, there exists a complementary relation between foreign R&D investment and returnees in facilitating firm’s patent innovation. State ownership negatively affects the relationship between foreign R&D investment and firms’ patent innovation.

While outward foreign direct investments (OFDIs) shift resources from a home economy to foreign destinations, increased market and resource access as well as technological and knowledge effects in return have positive impacts on the home region. Such effects may be especially important in emerging contexts, such as that of China. Analyzing data of 285 Chinese city-regions, this paper investigates the impact of OFDIs on home-region income. We show that foreign investment activity positively and significantly impacts income levels in the home region, with differentiated effects depending on the knowledge characteristics of investments and regional absorptive capacity.