CHINA-EDUCATION: INNOVATION

 In the past 15 years, China has more than doubled the percentage of its gross domestic product that it spends on research and development (R&D). National, provincial and local governments offer generous funding for almost anything related to innovation and entrepreneurship, and education reforms mean that schools are encouraged to foster the next generation of innovators. China trains about 30,000 science and engineering PhD students each year. A McKinsey report, however, says that companies still complain of skill gaps among science, technology, engineering and maths graduates. For now, the government is relying on Chinese-born, Western-trained scientists and entrepreneurs to run labs and train PhD students and junior scientists. The '1000 Talents Plan' initiated by China in 2009 has exceeded its goal and enticed more than 4,000 high-level scientists back to China with incentives such as high salaries. This has also meant paying to relocate many of the scientists' families, often from the United States, Europe, Japan and Singapore.  At the same time China spends only 5% of its R&D expenditure on basic science, compared with 18% by the United States and 16% by the United Kingdom.

 






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