Chinese companies lead global peers in innovation spending growth: report

Chinese companies led their global peers in research and development (R&D) spending growth, with an annual rate of 18.6 percent, according to the "2016 Global Innovation 1000 Study" report, released Wednesday by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).

A total of 130 Chinese companies were included among the 1,000 Global Innovation entities of 2016, up from 123 in the 2015 report. These companies spent 46.8 billion U.S. dollars in total on R&D.

As a result, R&D spending contributed by Chinese companies also increased, up from 5.8 percent in the 2015 report to 6.9 percent in this year's report.

With R&D spending at 2.2 billion U.S. dollars and R&D intensity (R&D divided by total sales) of 13.6 percent, Alibaba was the biggest R&D spender among such public companies.

Huawei, although a non-public company and not on the list, spent 59.6 billion yuan (8.8 billion U.S. dollars) on R&D in 2015, making it the highest spender in China, according to the report.

"As R&D spending by European companies and Japanese companies declined by 9 percent and 8 percent, and by North American companies grew by 8 percent, Chinese companies were in the lead," said Adam Xu, partner and leader of Digital Practice with Strategy&.

"Due to China's innovation-driven development strategy, Chinese companies have increased investment into R&D, indicating that they were shifting their advantage from competitive costs to innovation to build up their technological capabilities to win over the global market," Xu said. Endi