China can lead world in innovation system

Widely acknowledged as the world's leading economic think tank, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)'s Paris-based experts can read a country's vital signs in an instant, and prescribe whatever remedies are required to nurse it to growth-busting health.

So the publication two weeks ago of the OECD's review of innovation policy in China is a landmark moment. The dramatic increases in the country's spending on research in the past five years have attracted a great deal of international attention.

But now the OECD has provided independent confirmation of the progress that is being made. Reviewing the speed and scale with which resources have been mobilized, the OECD says there can be no doubt that China "is now a major R&D player".