China closing in on US as major competitor for technological innovation

China Daily | Updated: 2019-04-11 07:31

WASHINGTON DC - China is catching up with the United States in innovation, according to an American think tank report released on Monday.

In the past decade, China has been closing the gap with the US rapidly. It now leads the latter in some indicators, says the report by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation in Washington DC.

In 2007, China's investment in research and development was 33 percent less than the US. But by 2017, China had reached 76 percent of US levels and surpassed the European Union, according to the report.

Chinese government institutions spent more on R&D as a share of GDP than the US, rising from 84 percent of the US levels in 2007 to 119 percent in 2017.

Chinese venture capital markets were small in 2006; just 3.7 percent of US venture capital funding. But by 2016, venture capital firms in China provided half as much funding as companies in the US did.

China's research universities scored just 9.5 percent of that of the US in 2009. By 2018, they closed the gap to 28 percent, based on the Shanghai Academic Ranking of World Universities.

In 2004, Chinese articles were cited only 62 percent as frequently as the average article was cited globally in the three years following its publication. In comparison, US articles scored 141 percent. By 2014, however, Chinese articles had almost reached the global average, at 96 percent.

In 2006, the US Patent and Trademark Office granted 1,066 Chinese patents, 1.2 percent of which went to US inventors. In 2016, the number had risen to more than 11,000, the equivalent of 8 percent of US patents.

Also, China's high-tech manufacturing value-added grew from 30 percent in 2006 to 77 percent in 2016. If this growth rate were to continue, China would exceed the US in high-tech manufacturing value-added by 2020.

The report concludes that considering China a copier is a misconception and that China can and does innovate.

The report's coauthor Robert Atkinson, ITIF president, calls for an American national innovation and competitiveness strategy to maintain the country's leadership.

Xinhua