Relationship between economic liberalization and intellectual property protection with regional innovation in China. A case study of Chinese provinces

International openness can affect regional innovation through more export opportunities, enhanced import competition and the spillover effects of foreign direct investment. Many studies have been conducted based on different countries for capturing the determinants of regional innovation, but very little literature is available with contradictory findings for the case of China. Based on 19 years’ panel data of 31 Chinese provinces, this paper analyzes the impact of international openness on regional innovation measured by the number of patent grants. The positive effects of overall trade and a higher proportion of exports and imports to GDP are significant and robust across different model specifications, indicating that an increase in international openness can promote regional innovating activities in China. The causal relationship of all the variables depicted by path analysis matches the results of the system GMM model. Higher intellectual property protection provides each region with the opportunity to obtain economic benefits from innovation and then make a higher investment in R&D activities. Besides, the lag effect of regional innovation capability can also explain a large part of local innovating activities. In our subsample regressions, the positive effect of trade openness on innovation is majorly manifested in developed areas like eastern provinces.