China is on target to outspend both the US and the European Union on research and development by the end of the decade, reports University World News.
A new report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development says that as budgets tighten across the US and Europe, China is aiming to spend some 2.5 percent of its gross domestic product on research by 2020. In 2012, UWN notes, it spent nearly 2 percent of its GDP on research.
Other Asian countries are also making an investment in R&D: South Korea spent 4.36 percent, Japan 3.35 percent, and Taiwan 3.0 percent of their respective GDPs on research, the report says.
The recession hit research investment hard, and recovery has been "too modest for innovation activities to be back on track," UWN says.
"At 1.6 [percent], yearly growth in gross expenditure on research and development in OECD countries over 2008-12 was half the rate for the years 2001-08," Sandrine Kergroach, one of the report's authors, tells UWN.