CHINA is set to become the world s most important center for innovation by 2020, overtaking the United States and Japan, according to a public opinion survey published yesterday.
China is already the world s second-largest economy, after establishing itself as the global workshop. Now it wants to move up the value chain by leading in invention as well.
The United States ranks as the world s most innovative country today, with 30 percent of people surveyed taking that view, followed by Japan on 25 percent and China on 14 percent.
Fast-forward 10 years, however, and 27 percent think China will be top dog, followed by India with 17 percent, the United States 14 percent and Japan 12 percent, according to the survey of 6,000 people in six countries conducted by drugmaker AstraZeneca.
The shift is not because the United States is doing less in science and technology, but because countries like China and India are doing more a fact reflected in a spike in successful Asian research efforts in recent years.
A study last month by Thomson Reuters showed China was now the second-largest producer of scientific papers after the United States and research and development (R&D) spending by Asian nations as a group in 2008 was US$387 billion, compared with US$384 billion in the United States and US$280 billion in Europe.
The survey across Britain, the United States, Sweden, Japan, India and China found a strong sense of optimism among people living in China and India, in contrast to relative pessimism in the developed Western economies.
More than half of those in China and India thought their home countries would be the most innovative in the world by 2020, while only one in 20 Britons thought Britain would be able to claim this title.(SD-Agencies)
