At the Chinese Communist Party’s 20th congress, Xi laid out his vision for science and innovation to drive the country’s growth.
President Xi Jinping’s speech at the opening of China’s 20th Communist Party congress emphasized self-reliance in science and technology.China’s ambitions and reliance on science and technology were front and centre at the Communist Party’s all-important 20th congress in Beijing, which ended on Sunday.
There is little doubt that China will strengthen its R&D investment despite the economic situation, says Futao Huang, a researcher in higher education at Hiroshima University in Japan.
The report’s nod to the business sector’s major role in allocating R&D investment is encouraging, says Zhang. “Innovation requires diversity, innovation requires autonomy and innovation needs to tolerate failures,” she says. But Qian says the central government has increasingly been intervening in market dynamics, and this is likely to continue.
To boost the workforce, China could try to recruit international researchers and entice back Chinese scholars based overseas, alongside training local scientists, say researchers. But hiring foreign talent is a sensitive topic, Simon says, so local efforts “will be given high priority and the overseas recruitment will be more quietly done, without fanfare”.