Abstract: The high-tech development zones have been playing a leading role in the process of economic development of every region in China. By analyzing the data of 56 high-tech development zones in China from 2008 to 2009, with the help of the general DEA and super-efficiency DEA models, this paper tries to evaluate the relative effectiveness of technical innovation of the high-tech zones and provide the demonstration zones for the ineffective high-tech zones. It also offers the index target values for the ineffective high-tech zones to achieve technical efficiency by making use of the goal setting method. The results of the research show that the innovation efficiency in China’s high-tech zones are generally low; the innovation efficiency is ineffective in more than two thirds of the high-tech zones and is quite low in more than one half of the high-tech zones. Moreover, the innovation resources are not well structured and are wasted seriously. Especially in the centre region, the innovation efficiency averages only 64.9% (that means only 64.9% of the input resources has been used effectively), taking the last seat in the ranking in the whole country. Such kinds of problems as serious insufficient innovation investment and the unreasonable structure should arouse the attention of the local governments.

Key words: high-tech development zone；innovation efficiency；data envelopment analysis (DEA).