Chinese innovation is catching up

The West tends to hold a dim view of China's abilities to innovate, often emphasising its reliance on low-skill manufacturing and duplication of imported creations. However, China has been on a course to transform its economy, beginning with a model of incremental innovation but increasingly focusing on the development of independent and self-reliant intellectual property.

But it would be better to view these creations within a larger context of other such innovations: Google, Apple and Facebook - none of these companies invented their respective platforms or products; yet all have, like QQ and Weibo, made innovative modifications to existing products to yield results that are exponentially better than the original incarnations and generate commercial value for their innovation.

Despite the evidence, the West has yet to consider this new China paradigm to lead the innovation wave.

In the meantime, China has taken yet another step towards leading the global wave of innovation. Last month, the State Council, without much fanfare, released a circular on the 12th five-year plan for the development of strategic emerging industries. It is essentially a business plan to realise the innovation goals set forth in the five-year plan, and outlines priorities and tasks for the development of industries identified as strategically important.

These industries encompass environmental protection, new information technology, biotechnology, high-end equipment manufacturing, new energy, new materials and new-energy vehicles. Although the circular's stated objective is to merely match the international innovation environment, the quantifiable goals it sets out are ambitious. The emerging industries are expected to achieve an average annual growth rate of more than 20per cent through to 2015, and their total value-added output would account for around 8per cent of gross domestic product by 2015, with the figure going up to 15per cent by 2020.