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The report also notes that China still spends much less on basic research than the United States, both in terms of absolute amount and as a proportion of total R&D funding.
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China resumes R&D push with record US$441b outlay in 2021
- Beijing has put ‘new breakthroughs in original innovation’ back on the fast track after Covid-19 dip, National Bureau of Statistics official tells People’s Daily
- Areas receiving the biggest support included ‘space exploration, nuclear physics, quantum science and biological engineering’
Stephen Chen in Beijing
Published: 9:00pm, 9 Feb, 2022
Funding for scientific research and technological development had dropped in 2020 as China battled Covid-19 disruptions. Photo: Shutterstock
China spent a
record 2.79 trillion yuan (US$441.3 billion) on research and development last year, an increase of more than 14 per cent over 2020 – when nationwide lockdowns to contain the coronavirus pandemic saw the country post its lowest GDP growth in decades.
The
R&D spending growth rate in 2021 was more than 40 per cent higher than in the previous year, China’s National Bureau of Statistics said in releasing the data.
Beijing’s financial support for scientific research and technological development had dropped in 2020 as the
country battled Covid-19 disruptions, though businesses kept the R&D growth rate ticking over to reach 10 per cent, the bureau said.
However, the budget for basic science research projects that depended heavily on government support were mostly frozen or cut, according to some scientists involved in such ventures.
Zhang Qilong, a statistician at the bureau’s society, science and culture department, said government funding for basic science increased more than 15 per cent in 2021. This suggested that Beijing’s support for “new breakthroughs in original innovation” was back on the fast track, he told Chinese state media.
The areas receiving the biggest support included “
space exploration, nuclear physics, quantum science and biological engineering”, Zhang told
People’s Daily in a report published on Wednesday.
The government plans to launch new policies to further stimulate society’s overall R&D commitments, according to Zhang.
This is because, “when compared with the world’s scientific and technological powers, our country’s R&D investment is still insufficient in terms of scale, structure and efficiency”, he told the newspaper, which is the official mouthpiece of China’s ruling Communist Party.
In 2019, R&D spending by the US government, businesses and universities totalled US$667 billion, or more than 3 per cent of America’s GDP, putting it in ninth place in the global R&D intensity ranking by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
China was in 14th place, with corresponding expenditure the same year at US$346 billion.
Last year, China rose two places to 12th on the OECD ranking, with R&D expenditure hitting a new high of 2.44 per cent of GDP.
Zhang said Beijing would mainly focus on subsidies and tax incentives to boost R&D expenditure. Chinese companies that contribute more than 70 per cent to the country’s total R&D spending would enjoy tax deductions and direct government subsidies for research activities, he said.
Government subsidies induced more than six times as much R&D investments by listed Chinese companies, a study published in the domestic peer-reviewed
Business and Economy journal last year found.
However, lead author Liu Mingxu, professor at the management school of the Chengdu University of Information Technology, and colleagues also found that the firms’ increasing dependency on the government caused their investments to fluctuate dramatically in tune with policy changes.
R&D stimulation policies are also increasingly driving Chinese companies to appoint former officials with government connections as senior executives, in hopes of securing more funding, according to recent studies by Chinese economists.
These R&D “lobbyists” had played a positive role in helping Chinese companies achieve technological advancement, especially in less-developed regions such as western China, but their close ties with the government also increased the risk of corruption and illegal transfer of benefits, the researchers warned.
