From “Made in China” to “Invented in China”

Along more than three decades, China has managed one of the most impressive catching-up drives in human history. Its accomplishments in terms of extensive development are outstanding and undeniable, but the country has now already reached a turning point, when internal and external factors call for a major qualitative switch. To avoid the “middle income trap” and to further develop, China must switch from cheaply processing/assembling foreign-designed goods, with transferred foreign technologies, to producing high-skill and knowledge-intensive goods engineered in China, using technologies devised locally. The paper briefly presents the targets of China’s R&D strategic planning – and, implicitly, of its industrial policy – and then it looks at the efforts made and the results got in this field in recent years, sketching the Chinese academic and industrial R&D landscape and identifying some of its most important new shifts and trends. It concludes that the country has already made rapid and significant strides, paving the way for a successful switch to an innovation and knowledge-based economy, with governmental policies in support of RDI playing a major role.