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ABSTRACT
China has made tremendous progress in building its science and technology capabilities. But to achieve its ambitions to become an innovation-oriented nation, the country has to challenge itself by establishing an enterprise-centered national innovation system, better spending the increasing sums of money on innovation, improving its intellectual property rights regime, overcoming talent shortage, and nurturing a culture of creativity.
Keywords: China, innovation, policy, intellectual property regime (IPR), IPR protection, talent, culture
ASTONISHING ACHIEVEMENTS
In the span of three decades, China has evolved from being a peripheral player to become the most potent engine in the global economy. Along with its rapid economic progress and the many improvements in the quality of life for large numbers of the Chinese population, a variety of indicators suggest that China's science and technology (S&T) capabilities also are on a sharply rising trajectory (Table 1). China started to restructure its S&T management system in the mid-1980s to make it quicker and better able to respond to the need of the economy. Since the 1990s, and especially 1995 when 'strengthening the nation through science, technology, and education' (kejiao xingguo) became a new development strategy, China's expenditure on research and development (R&D) has been increasing at a rate approximately twice that of overall economic growth. In 2007, China spent renminbi (RMB) 371 billion (USD 48.8 billion) on R&D, or 1.49% of its increasing gross domestic product (GDP), highest among countries with similar economic development level, though the percentage is still lower than that of most of the developed economies. This put China fourth in the world, after the US, Japan, and Germany.1 Chinese institutions of higher education are turning out an increasing number of well-prepared graduates in science and technology. In 2007, China graduated some 194,000 students with master's and doctoral degrees, on top of 1.59 million engineering undergraduates as well as 231,000 science undergraduates (total graduating undergraduates reached 4.48 million). Unequivocally, this represents the world's highest output in terms of overall numbers.
In recent years, there also has been a steady increase in the number of high quality international papers published by Chinese scientists. Measured by the number of papers included into the Science Citation Index (SCI) - a bibliometric database published by Scientific Business of Thompson Reuters -...