China forging ahead as innovation powerhouse

R&D Investment

China spent a record 2.79 trillion yuan ($387.5 billion) on research and development last year, an increase of 14.2 percent over the previous year. Investment in fundamental research reached 169.6 billion yuan, accounting for about 6.1 percent of total R&D expenditure, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

Its total R&D expenditure is second behind the United States, which spent $708 billion on R&D in 2020, according to the US National Science Foundation.

Yuzo Tanaka, a professor of economics at Ryukoku University in Kyoto, said the Chinese government should be given credit for these achievements.

"The Chinese government has been leading investment in both fundamental research and clinical research," Tanaka told China Daily. "The money put into it and the vast number of PhD holders in the country is making China an undeniable actor in spearheading global innovation."

China attaches great importance to innovation as a driver of national development. It has set the goal of creating a country of innovators with a strong science and technology culture, as well as an innovation-driven development strategy.

Innovation is focused on four main areas: exploring global scientific and technological frontiers, serving principal economic sectors, meeting major national needs and improving lives and health.

"The Chinese say that 'science and technology constitute the foremost productive forces', and I think that's why it can achieve so many things and be the world's second-largest economy despite the fact that it is still a developing country, and it has unbalanced development between its east and west," Tanaka said.

The Rathenau Institute, an organization in the Netherlands for technology assessment, views China as "a scientific superpower in the making".

"China is catching up to and even overtaking the EU through impressive growth in R&D investment," it said in an article published on its website in July.

According to their statistics, China was at the same level as the Netherlands in 1996 in terms of R&D investment, but in 2020, its total R&D funding was higher than that of the 27 EU countries combined.

Although the US is still the largest investor in R&D, China's R&D expenditure grew 2,722 percent from 1996 to 2019, compared with 117 percent of the US.