Exploration and Analysis of the Relations between China and Foreign Countries Based on Knowledge Flows of Patent Citation

By using the data during 1987 to 2006 from United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), this paper presents a detailed analysis of China's knowledge flows, rather than traditional analysis expended from partial research. The result reveals that the knowledge flow is widespread in the world, What's more, the developed countries, like America, and the emerging countries and areas, like Korea and Taiwan, are in the kernels of the knowledge network. The US is the most important node in world's knowledge flow and China is greatly effected by these kernel countries and competitive in some technology domain. For innovative country construction, it is a trend for China to join the mainstream of the knowledge flow.