Chinese firms bridging the standardization gap in 3GPP: liabilities of outsidership and the role of technological shifts

Chinese firms often face liabilities of outsidership, struggling to access established global technology development networks. Focusing on technical standardization, we analyze how generational technology shifts affect collaboration in 3GPP, the body developing global telecommunication standards. Employing fractional logit regressions on a standards contribution panel dataset, we observe that Chinese firms strengthened their collaboration in standardization networks following the shift from 3G to 4G, particularly with geographically and institutionally proximate partners in the Asia-Pacific. This narrowed the standardization gap, leading us to conclude that technological shifts within collaborative networks might offer opportunities for late entrants to become standard setters.