Innovation in China: a promising new chapter
- By Wei Jia
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E-mail China.org.cn, March 17, 2016
The success of Lenovo, Huawei and Xiaomi will only benefit from the country's new emphasis on innovation, and frontier-pushing startups catalyzed by the government's favorable policies will surely make the most of this auspicious time.
As well as the private sector innovators pulling no stops in their quest for market share through trend-setting products, state-owned enterprises are shedding their image of lumbering adapters to market change in favor of an inventiveness that builds on the feat of "Two Bombs and One Satellite."
The 2016 government work report duly highlighted the achievements of state-owned enterprises, stating that during the 12th Five-Year Plan period (2011-2015), a raft of original breakthroughs were made in the fields of quantum communications, neutrino oscillation, and iron-based high-temperature superconductivity, and projects such as manned space flight, lunar exploration, and deep-water exploration are of world-leading levels.
The progress China made on the innovation front has not been limited to the period after Premier Li Keqiang first raised the idea of mass entrepreneurship and innovation in 2014. According to the National Science Board, the U.S. science policy advisor to the President and the Congress, the size of China's high-tech manufacturing industry increased nearly six-fold between 2003 and 2012, raising China's global share of high-tech manufacturing from eight percent to 24 percent during that decade, closing in on the U.S. share of 27 percent.
The progress of this comprehensive ferment of intellectual adventurism that is sweeping China is not without obstacles. Inadequate protection of intellectual property rights is definitely one of them. But the Chinese government is committed to placing and keeping innovation at the heart of the economy, outlining in its draft plan for the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-2020) that critical breakthroughs will be made in such fields as information and communications, new energy, new materials, aeronautical and space technologies, biomedicine, and intelligent manufacturing.
If the success of its high speed trains, Shenzhou spacecraft, Taobao e-commerce platform, WeChat messaging app, Haier home appliances and DJI quadcopters are reliable indicators, China's new chapter in innovation will be truly exciting.
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