中國大陸的無形資產與經濟發展

Abstract

More than a decade ago, scholars and economists began coining the term intangible assets; the usage of this term could be traced back to as early as the 1960’s. As China makes a name for itself on the global market, its development has been under the spotlight. Since it opened its doors to the outside world in 1979, China has made great economic progress as it transitions into a market economy. As tangible assets of China are researched and analyzed by such firms as Goldman Sachs, it was predicted in the late 90’s that China’s entrance into the world market as a leader would be astonishing, marking it as early as 2042 to take over the United States as the largest economy of scale. However, this research hopes to challenge whether tangible indicators of growth is enough to determine future economic standings in China or are other driving forces of growth, such as intangible assets, also affect and contribute to economic development. In order to fully understand the effect that intangibles have on economic development, market, technology and institutional driving forces of China’s intangibles were researched and analyzed. This research uses the a ‘triple-helix’ structure to illustrate the interaction with these three driving forces and their implications as existing literature is surveyed and a development path of China’s intangible assets is constructed. From this development path, further classification of individual chronological stages along with its characteristics and strategy are analyzed and located. From these characteristics, motivations and effects of such intangibles development are identified. In conclusion, this research believes that the predictions made by Goldman Sachs may have proved to be too optimistic having ignored all non-tangible assets. Nonetheless, the development of China’s intangible assets, though still lacking implementation, have made unprecedented improvements over the past 25 years and will continue to play a vital role in its economic development.