China companies' R&D investment more than doubles over 5 years

Nikkei Asia ^

[FarCenter]

SHANGHAI -- Chinese companies are stepping up investments to develop products on their own without mimicking those acquired from Japanese, U.S. and European peers.

Companies listed in China spent 1.64 trillion yuan ($228 billion) on research and development programs in 2022, marking a 2.6-fold increase over the past five years.

"We have captured a market share of 90% in the U.S. and Europe," said Wu Jing, vice president of Jiangsu Shemar Electric, which listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange in 2019.

With ceramic insulators of electric power cables being rapidly replaced with those of safer composite materials, Jiangsu Shemar has developed a safer, lighter polymer insulator that has a longer life. This new insulator has made Jiangsu Shemar a world-leading company in the field.

Chinese companies have so far introduced cutting-edge technologies from Japanese, American and European firms and based their manufacturing technologies on them. They have been able to boost sales thanks to huge markets in China. But as the copycat strategy is not feasible overseas, they are starting to see limits to growth.

Jiangsu Shemar is just one of many companies in China that are boosting their R&D programs to become more competitive. Their strength is in their sheer scale. China's listed companies have a total of 3.08 million researchers and other staff working in R&D. Jiangsu Shemar has 216 of them, accounting for 14% of its workforce.

Chinese automaker BYD has the biggest R&D team of 69,697 staff, including 590 holders of doctorate degrees and 7,827 with master's degrees. A considerable number of them have studied at top-notch universities in the U.S. and Europe. With such a capable workforce, BYD has developed products such as the advanced-safety and high-capacity "blade battery" using lithium iron phosphate.

[hardspunned]

Chinese R and D investment doubling means twice as many Chinese “students”.

[Gen.Blather]

Anytime Xi makes an announcement there follows a nearly hysterical implementation of “Xi’s thoughts.” “Xi’s Thoughts” is the replacement for Mao’s Little Red Book. Thing is, everything said by the typical government official reads more like poetry than instructions. When Xi said to clean airports, as Covid was being imported from abroad, this resulted in men wearing Biol Level 5 suits disinfecting runways. Someone else saw that and decided the same thing should be done for city streets. Xi said that China must learn to subsist on its own internal demand for goods and services. (Demand comes from a demographic group almost wiped out by the One Child Policy. So, it can’t happen.) But one of the things Xi called for was internal research and development to free China from Western innovation. Thus, money will be spent on “research.” But as with the billions spent on developing their own microcircuits, it will all be wasted. The government cannot dictate, from their positions in the ivory towers, what the masses living on the streets actually do.

[TwelveOfTwenty]

This article shows just how stupid those free trade deals with the Chicoms were. They are copying our technology and using our consumer dollars to develop their own.

That's on top of all of the other damage these trade deals have caused.

And after all of this, where are those lower prices the free traitors promised us?

[PIF]

China was already spending $9.2 billion on Precision Medicine (genetic research by the PLA).

[OldCountryBoy]

Question: How is composite polymer “safer” than ceramic?

It is, no doubt, cheaper to produce, but safer?

Different values and risk assessment measures than the west.

[bert]

Presently, China is exporting very little. Last week or so, there were no container vessels at the Shanghai loading docks

Chairman Xi is transitioning the nation from one with thriving private businesses to one where all economic activity is accomplished by businesses controlled by the CCP. The era of private businesses in China is over.

The new China socialism is where jobs are provided by the CCP businesses and industries as compared to the Maoist communism where jobs were provided by the communes.

[FarCenter]

>>Presently, China is exporting very little. Last week or so, there were no container vessels at the Shanghai loading docks

Do you have a reference for that?

It doesn’t appear to be true according to the vessel tracking web sites.

E.g. https://alltrack.org/list-port-of-calls-1253-cnshg-shanghai

[jimpick]

This innovation will last until their competitors steal the new technology. Until they start protecting those making the new technology this will fizzle and die.