OECD: innovation shall be promoted in China

Despite remarkable growth of China's hi-tech exports, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) urged China to boost innovation on August 27.

China has witnessed rapid growth in hi-tech exports in decades. From early 1990s to 2005, hi-tech products' share in China's total exports increased from 5% to over 30%.

Working together with Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology, OECD finished its first review on China's innovation system, in which the rise of China's hi-tech exports in recent years is cited as "spectacular".

However, the hi-tech exports of China mainly originate from foreign-owned enterprises. Currently, 88% of all the hi-tech exports of China are taken by products of foreign-owned companies. In particular, manufacturing industry related to information and communication is controlled by foreign players.

China ranks top in R&D in the world, with the second largest population of researchers and the sixth largest R&D spending. However, less than one third of the total expenditure on R&D is spent on basic research and applied research. "The lack of basic and applied research implies that little research is likely to lead to patentable inventions," OECD said.

To drive the country's economy into an "innovation-oriented" one by 2020, China still needs to make huge efforts to promote innovation, said OECD.