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China - The world's hotbed of innovation?
Published December 21, 2012
A recent survey of managers sees it displacing the Silicon Valley as early as 2016
By Georges Haour and Marc Laperrouza
Published December 21, 2012
A recent survey of managers sees it displacing the Silicon Valley as early as 2016
By Georges Haour and Marc Laperrouza
NEVER has the world witnessed a large market emerge so quickly as China has. As the economy grows it is also changing. China is fast climbing the value curve, transitioning from low-cost manufacturing to innovation-led growth.
In telecommunications, supercomputing, life sciences, non-fuel energy sources and "green-tech" in general, there is already a vibrant innovation/research and development (R&D) scene in China.
Over the past 20 years, investment in R&D has more than doubled in percentage terms, rising from 0.73 per cent of GDP in 1991 to 1.77 per cent in 2011. The plan is to reach 2.5 per cent - today's average for the countries of the European Union - by 2020. In absolute terms, given the rapid growth of China's GDP, the numbers are even more impressive.
Between 2000 and 2010, the volume of R&D investment expanded 6.6 times, reaching 700 billion yuan (S$137 billion) in 2010. At this rate, China could soon go from being the world's biggest factory to becoming a main laboratory for the planet.