China's R&D spending up 11.6% in 2017

BEIJING - China's spending on research and development (R&D) grew faster in 2017 as the country continued to push for innovation-driven development.

Preliminary calculations showed that R&D spending rose 11.6 percent year-on-year to 1.75 trillion yuan ($280 billion) in 2017, 1 percentage point higher than in 2016, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said Tuesday.

The spending accounted for 2.12 percent of China's gross domestic product, 0.01 percentage points higher than the previous year.

Chinese enterprises spent more than 1.37 trillion yuan on R&D last year, up 13.1 percent from 2016, while R&D spending at government institutions and colleges increased 7 percent and 5.2 percent, respectively.

Some 92 billion yuan, or 5.3 percent of the total spending, was put into fundamental research in 2017, up 11.8 percent from a year earlier, the NBS said.

According to the 13th five-year plan for national science and technology talent development (2016-2020), China will increase its annual per capita spending on R&D to 500,000 yuan by 2020, up from 370,000 yuan in 2014.

China had 5.35 million people working in R&D at the end of 2015, the world's largest pool of R&D personnel.