Forging synergistic innovation policies and continuously enhancing their effectiveness are crucial to addressing the “chokepoint” issue in core technologies. This paper evaluates the synergistic effect of basic research investment and government R&D subsidies, based on the data of regional innovation practices and the manually-sorted data on R&D subsidies and new technology investments of Chinese listed companies from 2009 to 2020. The results show that combining basic research investment with government R&D subsidies generates a significant innovation effect. By building a high-quality public-knowledge pool, basic research provides enterprises' innovation with foundational inputs, while the R&D subsidies lower the risk and cost of transforming that knowledge into commercial products. Further empirical results show that only firms with strong technology-absorption capacity can effectively identify, assimilate and integrate knowledge spillovers from the public research system, thereby aligning basic research outputs with their own R&D activities and unlocking the synergistic gains of the two policy resources. The conclusions offer significant policy implications for optimizing the allocation of innovation resources, enhancing the efficiency of science-and-technology funding, invigorating innovation actors, and achieving high-level self-reliance and self-strengthening in science and technology.

Joint innovation is an important measure for China to break down technological barriers and achieve technological breakthroughs in key areas. Against the background of increasing pressure on China's fiscal balance, it is of great practical significance to objectively assess the impact of government R&D subsidies on corporate collaborative innovation. Taking Chinese A-share listed companies from 2007 to 2022 as a sample, based on the invention patent data, this paper identifies the joint innovation behaviours of enterprises, and examines the impact of government R&D subsidies on corporate joint innovation. It is found that government R&D subsidies have a facilitating effect on corporate joint innovation. Further analyses show that co-innovation promotion is more pronounced for firms with high R&D risks, and that the type of subsidy with high signal strength promotes joint innovation more significantly. The above findings provide a scientific basis for optimizing the structure of R&D subsidies and accelerating the establishment of joint innovation networks in China.