"China can not turn into an innovative country until enterprises really become the main bodies of technology innovation." Ms.Jiang Ying, a NPC deputy and a member of Law Group of NPC Standing Committee, expressed her ideas during an interview with China IP News reporters. According to Ms. Jiang, enterprises should increase investment proportion to research and development (R&D) with the market as orientation, become the main bodies of R&D as well as technical innovation.

The government work report this year has repeatedly mentioned self-innovation and the government will increase investment to independent innovation in 2007, an exciting news to Ms. Jiang. She thought that China shouldn't take number of science and technology achievement as the mere symbol of becoming an innovative county, but, what is more important, should observe the contribution of science and technology to national economy. This mostly relied on enterprises. The contribution of science and technology to GDP are as high as over 60% in many innovative countries around the world, while in China the rate is just around 30%. Only when the innovation ability of thousands enterprises would be enhanced and turned in to the main bodies of R&D investment and self-innovation, then the national innovation strength can be consolidated. Thus, China should establish the innovative system with enterprises as the core, market orientated, combining production and research.

Ms. Jiang believed the investment to R&D in Chinese enterprises is still low considering their sale volume and comparing with those in developed countries, a big gap for Chinese enterprises becoming main bodies of self-innovation. In recent years, the R&D investment of many Chinese enterprises has been keep on increasing, representing technical innovation, IPR consciousness as well as the R&D ability of enterprises were greatly improved.  The proportion of R&D input accounted for 5% of their sale volume in many big enterprises, and some even hit 10%.  A large number of private small-and-medium-sized hi-tech businesses showed their strong momentum in increasing their investment to R&D, while the proportions in state-own enterprises are still quite low. A major reason for this is the deep involvement to market economy for the private enterprises as they clearly know that no innovation they will  be eliminated. On the contrary, some state-own enterprises are not so sensitive to technical innovation.

Patent application and approving in Guangdong have been staying the top position for 11 years since 1995, Ms.Jiang gave the example. This attributed to the emphasis on IPR and policy support from the provincial government and early integration into the market economy by many enterprises. Enterprises in Shenzhen have become the main bodies of self-innovation, 90% of R&D centers run by enterprises, 90% of R&D personnel and fund were from enterprises, over 90% on-duty patent for invention were applied by enterprises either. The annual patent application of Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd exceeded 3,000 a year, 85% of which were patents of invention. This clearly indicated R&D investment of enterprise should be market orientated and surely can not to be blind.

2007-03-21