A study on technological learning performance of Chinese automobile industry

The automobile industry in China has stepped into the stage of adopting and learning foreign technology since 1987. In the past twenty years, there appear three typical technological learning patterns in automobile industry. First, local companies gain technology support from multinational companies through establishing joint ventures, with the aim of realizing technological learning through assembly manufacturing, e.g., Shanghai Volkswagen. Second, local companies develop professional R&D center with multinational companies after establishing joint ventures with them, which provides support and guarantee for the production and operation of the joint ventures, e.g., Shanghai GM and PATAC. Third, with the development of self-owned brands, local companies attempt to completely merger multinational companies or buy out the whole technology, aiming to improve technological innovation capabilities through independent innovation and integrating innovation resources, e.g., SAIC Motor´s acquisition of Rover. This paper takes the quantity and quality of self-owned brand products, the promotion of technological innovation capabilities, and the intellectual property right of the enterprises as the main criteria, making a comparison of the three kinds of technology learning patterns, which aims to explore more effective technology learning models.