China’s ‘leapfrog period’ of rapid scientific achievement makes it an innovation powerhouse, says minister
- ‘China has successfully entered the ranks of innovative countries,’ according to science and technology minister
- Number of R&D workers in the nation rose from 3.25 million in 2012 to around 6 million in 2022
Wang Zhigang on Friday said it had been a “leapfrog period” for development with “unprecedented growth in the capacity for science and technology innovation”, and it was a driving force for productivity.
“China has successfully entered the ranks of innovative countries,” the minister said.
According to Wang, China’s innovation rankings boost could be attributed to skyrocketing investment in research and development over the past decade, having risen from 1 trillion yuan (US$145 billion) in 2012 to 3.09 trillion yuan in 2022.
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The funding for basic research has also seen a substantial surge – from 49.9 billion yuan in 2012 to around 195.1 billion yuan in 2022 – with its share of total research and development funding rising from 4.8 per cent to 6.3 per cent.
Wang highlighted that China has had the most research and development workers in the world for many years, a population that has grown from 3.25 million in 2012 to around 6 million in 2022.
According to Wang, the rise of China’s technological strength has significantly increased its influence on the global innovation landscape.
“China has not only become an important participant in international cutting-edge innovation, but also a significant contributor to solving global problems,” Wang said.
Wang pointed to Chinese contributions to the world’s most cited scientific papers as an indicator of its rise in the research world. He said papers that ranked in the top 1/1000 of the most cited papers worldwide made up 41.7 per cent of all global citations, and papers with high citations made up 27.3 per cent.
After reflecting on China’s significant achievements in developing cutting-edge scientific facilities – such as the Five-hundred-metre Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) – Wang acknowledged that some technological shortcomings were holding the country back.
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However, the minister said up and coming scientific talent hinted at a bright future.
“The real hope for technological advancement lies in the younger generation of scientists,” Wang said. “It is important to provide young scientists with more opportunities and a larger stage to showcase their talents so they can demonstrate their intelligence and creativity, take on major challenges and achieve significant results.”
China’s accelerated growth in science and development may have boosted its ranking in the GII metrics but it still trails behind other Asian powers, such as South Korea and Singapore.
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It is also ranked outside the top 50 for GII metrics related to international relations, such as student numbers from abroad, joint ventures and foreign direct investment, which were hit by the zero-Covid policy in the past three years and geopolitical tensions, but could be critical for achieving growth in science advancement in the long term.
The WIPO report identified weaknesses in China’s regulatory environment, including having a relatively lower regulatory quality and a higher “cost of redundancy dismissal”.
