The measurement of regional technological capability in China: An empirical study

Based on the literature review, this paper proposes a new perspective for the measurement of technological capability at the region level. Through the examination of the development process of technological capability and regional environmental foundation, this paper constructs an evaluation index system for technological capability at the region level. With the help of principal component analysis, using data of 31 provinces in the 4 main economic regions of China, this paper gets a measure model of regional technological capability, including three principal components: the technological input and output ability factor, economic transforming ability factor of technological achievements, and the supporting ability factor of regional education. According to the measure results of regional scores and ranking, this paper concludes that the distribution of China´s regional technological capability shows the pattern of decreasing ladder from east to west, and then discusses the reason of its formation. The results provide a quantitative tool for the measurement and a strategic framework for the improvement of the technological capability at the region level.