China's Government R&D Institutes

Abstract

This article analyses the reform process of China's government R&D institutes and discusses future directions. The overall status of Chinese science and technology is reviewed in order to explain the background of the reform process. Reform was started to change the prevalent inefficiencies of government R&D institutes, which have been very important players in the Chinese national innovation system. The reform processes can be classified into two. The first is to make government R&D institutes serve the economic battlefield, while the second is to restructure their internal organisations and establish a Chinese national innovation system. After the reform, Chinese government R&D institutes have changed a lot and the results seem to be positive. However, there are still some fundamental issues unresolved and questioned, such as ownership, management and focus of R&D activities. In the last part, those associated obstacles and arguments of the reform are discussed and presented for the future policy directions.