| National discourses on the technological leadership: The strategic priorities of China, Russia and the United States in the context of spatial development |
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Author: Olga N. Sezonova Kursk State University, Kursk, Russia Abstract: Against the backdrop of global architecture transformation, technological sovereignty is becoming a strategic priority for national economies. The study aims to compare national discourses of large countries – China, Russia and the USA – on technological leadership through the lens of spatial specifics of innovation activity organisation. Methodologically, the research rests on the theory of technological frontier, the concept of national innovation systems, and spatial development theories. The study employs the sematic analysis of term co-occurrences involving the use of the VOSviewer software. The empirical base comprises 1,047 scientific publications from the OpenAlex bibliometric database covering the period of 2010–2025, including national subsamples for China (32), Russia (61), and the USA (65 publications). The results indicate that the thematic profile of publication activity aligns with each country’s position relative to the technological frontier. It is found that American and Chinese researchers incorporate territorial dimension into their innovation development agendas (3 and 6 % of publications, respectively), whereas in the Russian part of the international corpus this thematic area is absent. The study identifies the discursive asymmetry between the strategic orientation towards technological sovereignty and its representation in the academic field. The conclusions drawn establish a conceptual foundation for producing recommendations on the science and technology development, adapted to institutional conditions and a country’s position relative to the technological frontier. Keywords: technological leadership; technological sovereignty; technological frontier; spatial economics; national discourse; strategic priority; semantic analysis. For citation: Sezonova O. N. (2026). National discourses on the technological leadership: The strategic priorities of China, Russia and the United States in the context of spatial development. Journal of New Economy, vol. 27, no. 2, pp. 114–133. DOI: 10.29141/2658- 5081-2026-27-2-6. EDN: FFNQQJ. Article info: received November 10, 2025; received in revised form February 3, 2026; accepted March 30, 2026 |
