A computerized text analysis on the evolution of China’s industrial internet policies concerning SMEs

Abstract This paper proposes a computerized text analysis framework to examine the evolution of China’s industrial internet policies concerning SMEs. Analyzing a corpus of 310 policy documents concerning SMEs in industrial internet domain, we first investigated their external structure. Thematic sequence evolution analysis subsequently identified five key topics. Building on a pivotal policy issued in 2017, the evolution of China’s industrial internet policies concerning SMEs was categorized into two stages. The paper further explored the characteristics of the intergovernmental cooperation network, and examined the evolutionary paths of policy themes using a Sankey diagram. The findings indicate that the five topics in stage 2 are essentially the continuation and further development of the policy themes in stage 1, demonstrating strong policy coherence in industrial internet domain. Theoretically, this study addresses the IAD’s challenges in exploring the evolution of action situations and the diverse processes of structural changes over time, while overcoming the ACF’s limitations in interpreting the interactions of common belief systems and interests.