China invests nearly 28.3 bln USD in basic research in 2022

China invested about 195.1 billion yuan (about 28.3 billion U.S. dollars) in basic research in 2022, accounting for 6.3 percent of the total R&D spending, the Minister of Science and Technology said on Friday.

China's total expenditure on R&D amounted to 3.09 trillion yuan (about 448.2 billion U.S. dollars) in 2022, accounting for 2.55 percent of the country's GDP that year, minister Wang Zhigang told a press conference.

China's hot papers accounted for 41.7 percent of the global total in 2022, while its highly cited papers accounted for 27.3 percent. Hot papers are papers published within the previous two years and which were cited enough times in the most recent two months to be placed in the top 0.1 percent when compared to peer papers.

China is not only an important participant in international frontier innovation but also an important contributor to solving global problems, Wang said.

In 2022, there were 400,000 high-tech enterprises in China, contributing 68 percent of the total R&D input of enterprises nationwide, and 762 of them were among the world's top 2,500 enterprises in terms of R&D input, according to the minister.