Clusters and Special Economic Zones as Means of Innovation and Industrial Policy: The Cases of China and Russia

The current paper presents a study of Chinese regional industrial policy with a comparative analysis to Russian cluster industrial policy, which is the topic of current interest for modern Russia. The work focuses on the structure of Chinese regional industrial agglomerations, their historical background and development models as the country has shown an unprecedented increase in the level of industrial production since the beginning of the policy of reforms and openness by Deng Xiaoping, that was aimed at the development of so-called Socialist Market Economy. One of the main features of the paper is that the topic is discussed within the framework of the term “cluster”, as it is understood by many Chinese and Russian researchers. The basic “cluster” definition for the work is the one provided by E. Kutsenko in his theoretical paper (Kutsenko, E., 2012). Apart from theoretical aspects the study includes a brief review of European cluster policy and the studies on Chinese industrial regions: special economic zones, high-tech development zones, industry-specialized cities etc. The result of the work will be a complex of measures to be recommended to be taken by Russian government in order to provide its international competitiveness on the global market. The methodology of study is the comparative analysis of the industrial policies of the two countries basing on previous research and official documents both in Russian and Chinese languages.