China focuses on innovation to boost economy amid global innovation trend

BEIJING - Against the backdrop of the gloomy global economy, almost all countries have taken innovation as a key to success. So does China.

On top-level design, China's 13th Five-Year Plan for 2016-2020 clearly lists innovation as the number one driving force for growth. China will encourage entrepreneurship and innovation, including scientific, cultural and business innovation.

Premier Li Keqiang said at a symposium on the 13th Five-Year Plan that the plan should focus on growth quality and efficiency to increase innovation's contribution to economic expansion.

China's innovation concept has been integrated into traditional manufacturing and booming Internet industry, with the establishment of the plan "Made in China 2025" and "Internet Plus" strategy.

China's Internet economy will take up 6.9 percent of its GDP in 2016, up from 5.5 percent in 2010, according to a research report by the Boston Consulting Group last year.

On the other hand, China's research and development (R&D) funds increased greatly. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the global research and development funds rose 1.4 times from 2000 to 2013, while China's R&D funds rocketed from 33 billion U.S. dollars to 336 billion dollars in the same period, up nearly 10 times.

Besides governmental direction, Chinese enterprises and researchers have also paid great attention to innovation that is considered by them an important development dynamic.

China spent a record 1 trillion yuan (about 162.4 billion dollars) on research and development in 2012, of which 74 percent came from companies, official data showed.

Chinese companies clinched three spots in the Boston Consulting Group's 10th annual global survey of the 50 most innovative companies released this month.

Chinese online media company Tencent is at 12, and Huawei and Lenovo are at 45 and 50 respectively. This is a remarkable progress. A decade ago, there were no Chinese companies on the list, the report's co-author Andrew Taylor said.

China's performance in innovation is outstanding, Francis Gurry, director general of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), said earlier.

China ranked 29th globally, the same place as the previous year and ranked first among the middle-income economies when measuring the quality of innovation, according to the eighth edition of the Global Innovation Index, co-published by Cornell University, INSEAD and the WIPO.

In fact, innovation not only meets China's economic transition, but also has become an important approach to compete with other economies around the world.

The United States, Japan and Europe have launched their innovation strategies over the past few years as they believe innovation could help them regain growth momentum in the sluggish economic recovery.

It is reasonable to say that countries that could occupy the innovative commanding point could take advantage in the next round of growth.