2.1

Development of China’s manufacturing industry

China attaches great importance to the development of the real economy. As an important part of the real economy, manufacturing industry has received high attention in the early days of the founding of New China. At present, China’s policies focus on the high-quality development of industries and the dual optimization of structure and innovation². As one of the seven strategic emerging industries in China, the central and local governments have formulated a large number of policies to encourage enterprise innovation and industrial development³. However, unilateral acts of enterprises cannot effectively promote the development of manufacturing. In order to reduce the long-term mismatch between R&D investment and economic growth and realize the sustainable development of China’s manufacturing industry, the Chinese government has strengthened its guidance on the industry in recent years. At the same time, it has promulgated a series of policies to improve the allocation efficiency of the manufacturing industry and realize the green reform of enterprises⁴. With the rapid development of manufacturing industry, the government’s regulation and control efforts have increased, and the types of policies have become diverse. The research on the synergy of manufacturing policies is of great significance for optimizing the structure of policy control.

2.2

LDA topic model

Topic model is a probabilistic generation model, which mainly includes latent semantic analysis⁵ (LSA), probabilistic latent semantic analysis (PLSA)⁶ and implicit Dirichlet distribution⁷ (LDA). LDA topic model is a probability extraction method which includes document, topic and word three-layer Bayesian structure, and generates and extracts its implicit topic from discrete data⁸. According to the generated three-level Bayes, the mixed topic words are obtained, and each topic is represented by the probability distribution of the words. On this basis, the topic summary is obtained⁹. At present, LDA is widely used in text topic mining, text classification and clustering, semantic recognition evolution and other fields¹⁰.

3.1

Recovery period

Figure 1 depicts the topics of China’s manufacturing policies in the recovery period (1978-2005). The management and development of enterprises is the centre, and the national automobile project is attached to the management and development of enterprises. The “quality of products and technologies” and “equipment manufacturing design technology” are in a relatively important position. In this period, China paid more attention to product quality, manufacturing process and related technologies. In the sixth Five-Year Plan, China has put forward a series of requirements for the development of manufacturing, such as improving the technology of the textile industry, improving the energy utilization rate of the metallurgical industry, mining new minerals, and replacing old chemical industrial equipment. The focus of policies in this period is to lay a solid foundation for manufacturing, especially on equipment quality and industrial technology.

Figure 1.

Co-occurrence map of policy topics in recovery period.

3.2

Adjustment period

Figure 2 depicts that the focus of China’s manufacturing policies has gradually shifted from the “management and development of enterprises” to the “industrial technology informatization and standardization”. At the same time, with the deepening of policies connotation and the deepening of the connection between products, industries, technologies, enterprises, standards and processes, China is pursuing the transformation of manufacturing industry from the general development mode of large and large to the coordinated development mode of high quality, high level and high standards. Generally speaking, the policies focus at this stage is divided into two aspects: on the one hand, it focuses on the development of products, mainly on the construction of automobile and related industrial parks and companies; on the other hand, it focuses on the macro development of the industry, including technology, process, quality, standard and informatization.

Figure 2.

Co-occurrence map of policy topics in adjustment period.

3.3

Intelligent development period

After the recovery and adjustment period, China’s manufacturing industry stepped into the intelligent development period. As shown in Figure 3, the topics of manufacturing policies in the intelligent development period include informatization, standardization, enterprise management, product quality and technology. The policies connotation of this period is very rich and the content is very extensive. Close links between topics. As can be seen from Figure 3, “industrial technology informatization and standardization”, “quality of products and technologies”, and “national automobile project” are located in the centre of the network diagram, which are more related to other topics. It also indicates that automobile in this period is still an important part to the development of manufacturing equipment. Moreover, the overall connotation of informatization and standardization is deepened, not only limited to products and technologies, but also involved in automobile manufacturing, enterprise management, transportation and storage.

Figure 3.

Co-occurrence map of policy topics in intelligent development period.

4.1

Analysis of policy instruments

From the perspective of policy objectives and policy types, according to Rothwell and Zegbeld’s theory, policies are divided into three dimensions of supply, environment and demand according to its role¹¹. The results are shown in Table 1.

Table 1.

Policy dimension and its distribution.

Table 1 demonstrates that environment policies accounted for 54%, demand policies and supply policies accounted for 15% and 31% respectively. The government issued environment policies to build a benign industrial cycle and create suitable external conditions for industrial development, resulting in excessive use of environment policies. Environment policies have a long time to come into effect and high uncertainty, which makes it difficult to play a substantial role in the short term. Demand policies can better mobilize the enthusiasm of enterprises and achieve a balance between government intervention and market competition. However, demand policies cannot bring fresh blood to stagnant industries in the short term. Supply policies can provide basic support for the industry, necessary conditions and talent for enterprise operation. Supply policies need continuous resource input, and it is easy to cause enterprise inertia.

Infrastructure construction accounts for 63% of the supply policies. While promoting the development of manufacturing industry, the government pays more attention to infrastructure construction. Goal programming in environment policies accounts for 78%. Goal programming policies play a guiding role in the development of manufacturing. But too much goal programming policies may lead to unclear direction of industrial development. Government procurement accounts for half of demand policies. The Chinese government attaches importance to the introduction of core technology and equipment, and encourages the absorption of international high-end technology. However, the role of the market is weakened, and it is difficult to achieve healthy competition between enterprises.

4.2

Policy synergy