Assistant Professor of Energy, Resources, and Environment Jonas Nahm has been awarded the prestigious 2017 Gordon White Prize in recognition of his article published in The China Quarterly.

In his report “Exploiting the Implementation Gap: Policy Divergence and Industrial Upgrading in China’s Wind and Solar Sectors,” Nahm argues that manufacturing policies of Chinese local governments have provided an important corrective to some of the weaknesses inherent in the central government’s indigenous innovation framework, most importantly its inattention to the importance of advanced manufacturing capabilities for innovation. Based on an original dataset of over one hundred executive interviews conducted with 43 Chinese wind and solar firms, Nahm identifies both central government R&D funding and continued local government support for manufacturing as critical factors in enabling innovation among China’s renewable energy firms.

The Gordon White Prize, in memory of Gordon White, a renowned scholar on modern Chinese politics and society, is awarded annually for the most original article by a scholar published in The China Quarterly, a leading academic journal on contemporary China and Taiwan.

Read the article here