GoKawiilChina’s rise to the status of science and technology superpower is in no small part due to the vast amount of public money it has poured into fundamental research. Its growth in spending in this area has outstripped the United States over the past decade as it seeks to drive up its research and innovation capacity further and reduce dependence on the West.
From 2013 to 2023, in nominal terms, combined central and local government spending on fundamental research in China more than tripled to 145 billion yuan (US$21 billion), according to data from the country’s Ministry of Finance. US government spending on fundamental research in 2023 was still much higher, but only increased by just over half to US$59 billion in the same period, according to the most recent data available from the US National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics. The results of China’s rising investment in fundamental research are plain to see: its contribution to articles in Nature Index journals, for example, is on track to be double that of the United States by the end of 2026.
Nature Index 2026 China
But, as China seeks to improve its ability to translate this cutting-edge fundamental research into the technologies of tomorrow — an area in which it has been playing catch up to other innovation-driven economies over the past decade — it is increasingly looking to the private sector to pitch in, both through companies’ own R&D and funding from an emerging breed of Chinese tech philanthropists.
China’s President Xi Jinping has specifically called for organizations outside the government to support fundamental research. Speaking in 2023 to an executive Chinese Communist Party committee on strengthening fundamental research, he said that non-governmental sectors should be encouraged to invest in such science through channels such as scientific funds or donations.
Such calls are being heeded, with the founders of Tencent — the firm behind China’s ubiquitous messaging app WeChat — PDD Holdings, the parent company of shopping site Temu, and phone manufacturer Xiaomi now mirroring the research philanthropy of their US counterparts from companies such as Intel, Microsoft and Hewlett Packard.
What is the motivation of these private science donors? Is this simply a by-product of a maturing innovation system that is becoming like the United States? Or is there more of a nation-building goal of wanting to help take China’s scientific status to the next level? And does a wish to stay onside with the government also play a role in their decision making?
Policy response
According to Yutao Sun, a specialist in innovation policy at the Dalian University of Technology in northeastern China, an increasing number of private firms will invest in public research because “they need to respond to government policy” about the role companies should play in the country’s science system.
One way that China’s emerging philanthropists are doing this is by running scientific prizes and grant programmes that researchers can apply to.
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