Philosophically, there are many discussions on the causal judgment of the success or failure of things. It is believed that internal and external factors are the decisive factors of the success or failure of things, and internal factors play a leading role. However, there is little research on the application of determinism of internal and external causes in economics. The report of the 19th National Congress puts forward that "innovation is the first driving force to lead development", which shows the importance of innovation. Therefore, this paper analyzes whether the methods of "internal seeking" or "external seeking" of technological progress has brought about China′s technological progress in China′s technological innovation and progress. 

〖JP3〗This paper holds that "internal seeking" technological progress means bringing domestic technological progress through self-innovation and cultivation of self-innovation environment, while "outward-seeking" technological progress means bringing domestic technological progress through imitation, reference and introduction of other countries′ technologies. On the basis of summarizing the literatures and defining the internal and external seeking ways of technological progress, it is found that although the existing literatures have studied one of the ways of "internal seeking" or "external seeking" of technological progress, few studies have incorporated the internal and external seeking ways of technological progress into a model for analysis. Although the role of resource allocation in technological progress is emphasized, there is a lack of research on integrating the elements of "internal and external demand" into a model and considering the impact of resource allocation on technological progress at the same time, that is, there is a lack of research on integrating market mechanism and government regulation into a model and refining its connotation and influence. 

This paper intends to make the following explanations. It refines and quantifies the internal and external seeking ways of technological progress, and measures the internal seeking ways with R&D capital stock and human capital stock, and measures the external seeking ways with IFDI R&D capital stock, OFDI R&D capital stock and international trade R&D capital stock. The supply-side structural adjustment of market mechanism, the demand-side structural adjustment, and the fiscal and monetary policies regulated by the government are taken as the main ways of resource allocation into the model study. By using the static panel data model of China′s provinces from 2008 to 2015, and adopting the regression method of gradually adding variables, this paper first discusses the situation of the whole sample. In order to analyze the influence of market mechanism and government regulation, the intersection items of market demand, market supply, fiscal policy, monetary policy and "internal and external demand" technological progress elements are added in time, and then the situation in the eastern, central and western regions of China is analyzed. 〖JP〗

〖JP2〗The research shows that both the "internal seeking" mode of independent innovation in China and the "external seeking" mode of learning and imitating foreign advanced technology can effectively bring about the progress of China′s total factor productivity, but the "internal seeking" mode plays a leading role. Market mechanism elements such as supply-side structural adjustment and demand-side structural adjustment, and government regulation elements such as fiscal policy and monetary policy can distort the impact of technological progress elements such as "internal demand" and "external demand" on total factor productivity. 〖JP〗

Moreover, the distortion effect has regional differences in the eastern, central and western regions of China, which is related to time effect and provincial and regional effect. In order to promote technological innovation in the new era, on the one hand, it is necessary to play the role of market mechanism and government regulation, on the other hand, it is necessary to improve self-technological research ability and strengthen the cultivation of self-innovation environment. On the premise of attaching importance to both of the elements of "internal and external demand", the emphasis is placed on the cultivation of "internal demand" technological progress ability, and at the same time, it is not lax to learn from other countries′ existing innovation experience.