China has become a world leader in sci-tech innovation

China has become a leader of the world in science and technology innovation from a follower, said Chinese Science and Technology Minister Wan Gang on Saturday.

He told a press conference that the contribution rate of the achievements in China's science and technology to the country's economic growth rose to 57.5 percent from 52.2 percent in 2012.

China is now leading the world in science and technology innovation, with the global influence in basic research improving significantly, Wan said.

"In science and technology innovation, China has been undergoing a process of turning from a follower to a side-by-side runner to a leader, with the contribution by science and technology progress rising to 57.5 percent from 52.2 percent "in 2012". 

"Major innovation achievements have kept emerging. China is leading the world in new types of business and new models including digital economy and sharing economy. The mass entrepreneurship and innovation are thriving," Wan said.

The minister illustrated a series of major innovations achieved in the past five years, including the manned submersible Jiaolong, the world's largest filled-aperture radio telescope FAST, the dark matter detection satellite "Wukong", quantum entanglement research, and the successful cloning of two monkeys.

"China's aerospace, deep-sea exploration, supercommuting and nuclear power are moving toward the front of the world. Its basic research, including researches on quantum entanglement, Weyl fermions, embryonic stem cells and recent cloning of two monkeys, has been enhanced. Results from such researches have been taking on global influence," said Wan.

The minister said China's sci-tech innovation has supported the supply-side structural reform and greatly improved people's livelihood and has achieved a historic leap in promoting the country's economic and social development as some technologies have been applied in infrastructure construction, medical field, energy, environmental monitoring and manufacturing.

Wan said sci-tech innovation has shifted from mainly relying on sci-tech personnel in the past to the mass. He noted that the mass entrepreneurship and innovation gradually takes shape and effectively serves the real economy.

"At present, we have over 4,200 makerspaces, 3,000 sci-tech business incubators, 400 business accelerators, and 150 national high-tech zones. All these have formed an ecological network and environment for innovation, served about 400,000 technology-based small-and-medium-sized enterprises and created over 2 million jobs last year," Wan said.

However, China is still weak in originality in innovation, the minister pointed out. In the future, China will focus on a long-term development of innovation, strengthen the top-level design, build up a big talent pool and improve prospective deployment of basic science research, Wan noted.