European firms' collaboration with Chinese universities: Forms and effects

This project will provide evidence on collaborations between European firms and Chinese research institutions. We will identify collaboration patterns by scraping websites of leading Chinese universities, research institutes of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), and WeChat accounts.

We ask: (1) What forms of collaboration can be identified between Chinese research institutions and European firms? (2) From the firm’s viewpoint, what effects does the collaboration generate? (3) Under which conditions can more legitimacy and innovation be achieved? To answer our research questions, we combine web-scraping, survey questionnaires and statistical analysis with grounded, qualitative methods.
We expect a better understanding of university-industry collaboration in China, and a better assessment of the opportunities and risks of international university-industry collaboration.