And speaking of R&D spending (see yesterday's posting), here is news about R&D spending in China - China will become world’s second highest investor in R&D by end of 2006, finds OECD:
China will this year for the first time spend more on research and development (R&D) than Japan and so become the world’s second highest investor in R&D after the United States, according to OECD projections based on recent trends.
“The rapid rise of China in both money spent and researchers employed is stunning,” said Dirk Pilat, Head of the OECD’s Science and Technology Policy division. “To keep up, OECD countries need to make their research and innovation systems more efficient and find new ways to stimulate innovation in today’s increasingly competitive global economy.”
Based on recent trends, China will spend just over USD 136 billion on R&D in 2006, just over Japan’s forecast USD 130 billion. The United States is predicted to remain the world’s leading investor in R&D in 2006, spending just over USD 330 billion. The EU-15, which includes France, Germany and the UK, is predicted to spend just over USD 230 billion.
According to the Financial Times:
Mr Pilat said that the bulk of the spending in China was on development work, to alter products for the fast-growing Chinese market, rather than basic scientific research.
The number of patents coming from China that were registered with the patent office in the US, Europe and Japan is still low and a string of recent scandals over academic fraud have also raised questions about how well the money is spent.
But Mr Pilat added that some multinationals were beginning to move genuine research to China because of the high numbers of skilled scientists they could recruit in Shanghai or Beijing. “There are some signs that they are starting to do fundamental or breakthrough work in China,” he said.
Not completely surprising, given all that I have been hearing about foreign companies investing in China and the Chinese government ramping up its own investments. But I would raise the same points as were raised yesterday: R&D spending does not automatically translate into business success. Nor do these surveys capture informal research.
OECD collects two sets of relevant statistics from nations: S&T statistics and innovation statistics. [Note that OECD simply collates the numbers. The actual statistical work is done by the national statistical agencies using OECD guidelines: the Frascati Manual for S&T and the Oslo Manual for innovation]. Chinese S&T statistics are considered relatively good. However, as far as I know, China (like the US) does not yet collect innovation statistics. The US is moving toward that goal (finally). I can only assume that the Chinese are as well. When we have that data (from both the US and China) we will be in a much better position to understand the competitive dynamics.
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