Technological innovation

The Shanghai-Nantong Yangtze Bridge under construction on the Nantong side of the river in Jiangsu province. Fixed-asset investment growth further slowed to 13.9 percent in the first two months of this year. Xu Congjun / For China Daily

China should accelerate its technological innovation to keep pace with the new round of technological revolution that has emerged since the 2008 global financial crisis.

China launched its economic transformation after the crisis, and it has achieved tangible progress in terms of structural adjustments. Employment in the service sector has been rising, the fast-growing deposit ratio has been reversed and the proportion of consumption has risen. And household incomes have witnessed faster growth than the gross domestic product. China's industrial pattern and income distribution are also more reasonable as the inland regions have registered faster growth than coastal regions.

China's current economic and social indicators are equivalent to those in Japan in the early 1970s and in Republic of Korea in the early 1990s, two Asian countries that experienced breakneck development in the following years, and are still making advancements. In particular, China's research input has been rising in proportion to its GDP, which is expected to be 2.2 percent this year and further increase to 2.5 percent by 2020, higher than that in many developed countries.

In fact, there have been initial signs of China developing leading technologies in some areas, such as the Internet and mobile telecommunications sectors, with companies such as Baidu, Ali-baba and Tencent, as well as some multinational telecommunications giants like Huawei and Zhongxing. China has also made leading innovations in the area of new materials, for example, in its graphene research and development. Also China's electrical vehicles enjoy an enormous domestic market and are expected to become a key player in the world market.

The efforts to create good legal and financial services for its innovative sectors, as shown by a series of measures to push for financial openness and intellectual property rights protection, will also fuel China's technological innovation and advancement.

The above is an abridgement of a People's Daily article published on Friday.