This chapter is about how China’s innovation policies have evolved to reflect a changing and supposedly better understanding of the innovation by China’s policymakers. It carries out a quantitative analysis of 630 innovation policies issued by China’s central government ministries from 1980 to 2019. It concludes that China has shifted its S&T and industrial policy-centered innovation strategy and pursued a more coordinated innovation-oriented economic development by giving increasing attention to a portfolio of policies that also include financial, tax, and fiscal measures. There has been a gradual departure from the pattern in which innovation policies are formulated by one single government agency, therefore steering China to a different and probably more promising innovation trajectory.

The examination of Westminster policy advisory systems begins with the administrative tradition that has fundamentally shaped, and continues to influence, the practices in the four cases and the country-specific developments. The anglophone countries constitute a coherent set because of their common tradition and their close historical and ongoing associations and interactions. This overview addresses the shared characteristics of the Westminster-type system and the constituent features of government pertinent to policy advisory systems. It compares public organisation and structures and unique characteristics, focusing on political executives, the machinery of government and ancillary public sector advisory agents (e.g. parliamentary committees, commissions of inquiry). The unique characteristics of the cases are examined, such as the distinct patterns of public sector reform that have implications for policy advice and the role of central agencies vis-à-vis departments.