Corporate R&D Determines the Fundamentals of China’s R&D Investment

Dalian University of Technology recently released the “China R&D Funding Report (2022)”. The report shows that China’s total R&D investment funding is second in the world after the U.S. In 2020, the scale of China’s R&D investment is equivalent to 49% of that of the U.S., 2.1 times that of Japan, 2.9 times that of Germany, and 2.9 times that of Canada, Italy and France combined. However, in terms of R&D investment intensity, China is equivalent to the middle position of G7, still lower than the level of Japan and Germany.

Enterprises, government and other institutions are the three major sources of R&D funding in China. from 1995 to 2020, the R&D funding provided by the enterprise sector grew from 30 billion to 1.87 trillion, accounting for 76.55% of China’s total social R&D funding, and the main position of enterprise R&D funding was further strengthened. The government is the second largest source sector of R&D funding in China, with a declining funding ratio, accounting for less than 20% in 2020. Among the top 20 companies in global R&D spending, Huawei ranks second, after Google in the United States, and Alibaba ranks seventeenth. Huawei’s R&D spending accounts for 72.24% of the top 10 R&D expenditures of China’s domestic listed companies and 12.23% of all domestic listed companies in China.

In terms of areas, Chinese industrial enterprises above the scale spend mainly on internal expenditures, and there is a wide gap between industries, with the computer, communication and other electronic equipment industry spending the largest scale, exceeding the sum of internal expenditures of the next 25 industries in the ranking.

It is worth noting that, in terms of basic research, the lack of enterprise execution of basic research funding is a prominent problem faced by China’s basic research. 2020, the proportion of enterprise execution of basic research funding in China was only 6.52%, while the proportion of enterprise execution of basic research in the United States reached 32.14% and the figure in Japan was 47.07% in the same period.

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大连理工大学日前发布《中国研发经费报告(2022)》。报告显示，中国研发投入经费总量仅次于美国，居世界第二。2020年，中国研发经费投入规模相当于美国的49%，是日本的2.1倍，德国的2.9倍，加拿大、意大利和法国研发经费总和的2.9倍。但从研发投入强度来看，我国相当于G7中游位置，仍低于日本和德国水平。

企业、政府以及其他机构是我国研发经费的三大来源。1995–2020年，企业部门提供的研发经费从300亿增长到1.87万亿，占中国全社会研发经费的比重达到了76.55%，企业研发经费投入主体地位进一步强化。政府是我国研发经费第二大来源部门，经费占比呈现下滑态势，2020年占比不足20%。在全球研发经费前20强企业中，华为排名第二，排在美国的谷歌之后，阿里巴巴排在第十七位。华为研发支出占中国境内上市公司前10名研发支出的72.24%，占中国全部境内上市企业的12.23%。

从领域上看，中国规模以上工业企业经费主要用于内部支出，且行业间差距悬殊，计算机、通信和其他电子设备业支出规模最大，超出排名靠后25个行业内部支出之和。

值得注意的是，在基础研究方面，企业执行基础研究经费不足是中国基础研究面临的突出问题。2020年，中国基础研究经费中企业执行占比仅为6.52%，同期美国基础研究企业执行比例达32.14%，日本这一数据是47.07%。