Low Costs, Plentiful Talent Make China a Global Magnet for R&D
BEIJING -- Multinational companies, drawn by a huge and inexpensive talent pool, are pouring money into research and development in China -- a trend that promises to broaden the country's huge role in the global economy.
The total number of foreign-invested R&D centers in the country has surged to about 750 from 200 four years ago, according to China's Ministry of Commerce. And in a survey of multinationals published in September by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, China was by far the most frequently cited location for R&D expansion, well ahead of the U.S. and third-place India, China's chief rival as an emerging innovator.
Still, China's growth as a global R&D hub faces some constraints. Among them is the country's weak protection of patents and other intellectual-property rights. That has encouraged some foreign companies, fearful of risking their trade secrets, to keep more cutting-edge research out of China, analysts say. But others have rushed to expand the scope of their development efforts here.
Whereas R&D investment in China initially focused on adapting existing products and technologies to the Chinese market, companies such as Procter & Gamble Co., Motorola Inc. and International Business Machines Corp., among many others, have been investing to expand their Chinese R&D operations to develop products for the global market.
P&G opened a research arm in China in 1988, consisting of two dozen employees concerned mainly with studying Chinese consumers' laundry habits and oral hygiene. Today, the U.S. consumer-products giant runs five R&D facilities in China with about 300 researchers who work on innovations for everything from Crest toothpaste to Oil of Olay face cream.
The Chinese facilities have been a lead site for developing a new grease-fighting formula of Tide laundry detergent that sells in Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America. At one facility in Beijing's university district, researchers use computer modeling to tinker with other promising formulas that chemists in white lab coats and protective glasses then mix and test. "We are developing capabilities in China that we can use globally," says Dick Carpenter, director of P&G Technology (Beijing) Ltd.
Giving impetus to the R&D expansion in sectors from biotechnology to pharmaceuticals to semiconductors is China's government. Having enlisted foreign investment to transform China into a manufacturing powerhouse over the past few decades, Beijing now is mounting a campaign to strengthen domestic innovation that could help push the country into more advanced niches of the global economy.
In his annual report at the National People's Congress in Beijing, which ends tomorrow, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said the central government will increase spending on science and technology by nearly 20% this year. "China has entered a stage in its history where it must increase its reliance on scientific and technological advances and innovation to drive social and economic development," he said.
China's State Council, or cabinet, recently said the country would seek to boost R&D investment to 2% of gross domestic product in 2010 and 2.5% by 2020. At a news conference Friday, senior officials outlined tax breaks and other tools they plan to use to meet that target. Last year, total R&D spending in China -- not including foreign investment -- reached $29.4 billion, rising steadily from $11.13 billion in 2000, according to the government.
China faces numerous obstacles to joining the ranks of the world's innovation leaders -- beyond its weak intellectual-property protections. Research spending is still small compared with that of developed countries; the U.S., for example, spends about 2.7% of GDP on R&D, compared with 1.3% of GDP in China last year. And much of what is spent in China still comes from foreign companies: Less than a quarter of Chinese midsize and large enterprises had their own science and technology institutions in 2004. Of China's high-tech exports, valued at $218.3 billion last year, nearly 90% was produced by foreign-invested companies, according to the Ministry of Commerce.
Still, the R&D trend is bolstering China's position relative to other developing countries, particularly India, which is also seeking to build its innovation abilities. India's total domestic spending on R&D rose an estimated 9.7% to $4.9 billion, or 0.77% of GDP, in the fiscal year ended March 2005, according to India's Ministry of Science and Technology.
India is also trying to build R&D, "but the scale of investment [compared with China] is not much" because of budgetary constraints, says V.S. Ramamurthy, a top official at the ministry. Foreign investment in Indian R&D has also lagged behind that of China, he says. And while Mr. Ramamurthy argues that the amount of investment isn't the only way to measure R&D success, "it is a concern for us."
Zhang Jun, director of the China Center for Economic Studies at Shanghai's Fudan University, says that given time, "China's advantages in this area will become more obvious...and its attractiveness will increasingly become stronger than India's."
Among China's draws, he says: the relatively low cost of hiring engineers and researchers; a huge talent pool, including five million university graduates annually (one-fifth majoring in science or engineering); and China's own huge market of 1.3 billion consumers. China offers its students abroad incentives to return once they graduate, including generous research grants and chances to run their own R&D projects.
One early returnee is Enge Wang. Mr. Wang, who had worked as a research associate at the University of Houston, decided to return to Beijing to conduct research under a Chinese Academy of Sciences program in 1995. At the time, he says, his U.S. colleagues and friends questioned his decision, but he says he is glad he made the move. Today, Mr. Wang is director of the Institute of Physics under the academy, one of China's top research organizations, which is engaged in several R&D cooperative ventures with foreign companies.
China's "research funding is getting much better," Mr. Wang says, and as a result, overseas Chinese are flocking back from top U.S. institutions like Harvard University and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Talented returnees can secure enough backing "to build up their own lab and extend their research in one direction for 10 years," he says. "It's hard to find such conditions elsewhere."
"There's been a paradigm shift among foreign companies in China," says Chen Zhu, a Chinese Academy of Sciences vice president. "Now, more foreign companies realize China is not just a market but a country with huge amounts of talent."
Motorola, which began investing in low-level R&D in China in 1993, now has 16 R&D offices in five Chinese cities, with an accumulated investment of about $500 million. The U.S. company has more than 1,800 Chinese engineers, and the number is expected to surpass 2,000 this year. They have recently begun developing new phones and other products for sale not only in China, but also overseas, executives say.
One phone developed in China, the A780, lets users write on the screen with just a finger, rather than a stylus. It's now available in the U.S. and Europe. Another phone that can scan contact information from business cards using a built-in camera and enter it into a contact database is expected to be marketed in the U.S. "China is moving from the manufacturing center into advanced R&D," says Ching Chuang, who heads Motorola's Chinese R&D operations.
Microsoft Corp.'s basic-research lab in Beijing was only its second outside the U.S. when it opened in 1998. That China lab now employs about 200 full-time scientists, and the software giant expects its total R&D headcount in China to double in this year to about 800 researchers.
At IBM's research lab in Beijing, Chinese scientists have led the development of several technologies now being used abroad. Among them: "voice morphing" software that can convert typescript or a recorded voice into another voice. "Our R&D now has a global mission," says Thomas S. Li, director of IBM China Research Lab.
At the state-run Institute of Computing Technology, engineers are tackling one of technology's tougher challenges: designing a computer microprocessor. Though still many years behind industry leaders like Intel Corp., the institute last year unveiled its second-generation microprocessor, with about the same computing power as mainstream chips in the late 1990s. This year, it plans to finish work on a third-generation chip that could narrow the gap.
China is also emerging as an R&D force in such sectors as nanotechnology, biotech and genetically modified crops. It was the first country to establish a full rice genome database, which has helped Chinese scientists develop hardier and higher-yielding strains of the staple cereal.
Swiss pharmaceuticals companies Novartis AG and Debiopharm SA have teamed up with the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica under the Chinese Academy of Sciences to conduct research into traditional Chinese medicines to look for treatments for malaria and Alzheimer's disease. "This last decade, the progress we have seen in China's scientific research sector is phenomenal," says Ju Li-ya, director of Debiopharm's China department.
中国凭藉人才优势成为研发投资磁石
在庞大的廉价人才库的吸引下，跨国公司纷纷在中国投资成立研发中心──这一趋势注定会扩大中国对全球经济的影响力。
据中国商务部统计，外商在中国设立的研发中心数量已从四年前的200所激增至750所左右。联合国贸易和发展会议(United Nations Conference on Trade and Development)去年9月发布的针对跨国公司的调查报告称，截至调查时，跨国公司谈到扩大研发时最常提及的地点就是中国，其频率远远超过美国和印度──中国作为新兴创新型国家遇到的最主要的竞争对手。
不过，中国要发展成为全球研发中枢还面临很多局限性因素。其一就是中国对专利和知识产权的保护不力。分析师们说，这已经促使一些公司因为担心泄漏商业机密而决定在中国之外投资成立针对更先进技术的研发中心。
起初，在中国成立研发中心主要是为了将现有产品和技术推广到中国。不过，宝洁(Procter & Gamble Co.)、摩托罗拉(Motorola Inc.)和国际商业机器公司(International Business Machines Corp.)等跨国企业一直扩大各自的中国研发中心，在此开发面向全球市场的新产品。
宝洁早在1988年就在中国成立了研发部门，20多名员工主要研究中国消费者的洗衣习惯和口腔卫生情况。现在，这架美国消费品巨头在中国有5家研发中心，大约300名研究人员研究开发从佳洁士(Crest)牙膏到玉兰油(Oil of Olay)面霜等各类创新产品。
宝洁的中国研发中心一直是开发汰渍(Tide)洗衣粉新配方的领先阵地，汰渍畅销亚洲、东欧和拉美市场。在北京大学区的一座研发中心里，研究人员用电脑建模，测试畅销配方洗涤的效力。“我们正在中国开发能推广到全球的性能和功效，”宝洁北京技术中心(P&G Technology (Beijing) Ltd.)总经理康瑞池(Dick Carpenter)说。
推动中国从生物科技、制药到半导体行业研发进展的主要力量是中国政府。几十年来，中国政府多方筹措吸引外资，将中国转型成世界制造工厂。现在，政府正在发起一场声势浩大的行动，加强本国的创新力量，促使中国在全球经济体系中占据技术更先进的一席之地。
中国总理温家宝在北京召开的全国人民代表大会上表示，中国政府今年在科技领域的开支将增加近20%。“中国已经进入了一个必须提高科技和创新依存度，推动社会经济发展的历史阶段。”
国务院最近表示，中国准备在2010年将研发投资占国内生产总值的比例提高到2%，到2020年进一步提高到2.5%。在上周五召开的一场新闻发布会上，政府高级官员们简要论述了减免税收等准备用来实现这一目标的种种方法。政府表示，中国研发总支出──不包括外商投资──从2000年的111.3亿美元稳步上升，去年达到294亿美元。
除了知识产权保护不力之外，中国要加入全球创新领导行列还面临诸多障碍。与发达国家相比，中国的研发支出仍然很低。就说去年，美国的研发支出占GDP的2.7%左右，而中国只有1.3%。而且，这1.3%里还有很多是外国公司的投资。2004年，中国的大中型公司只有不到四分之一的企业拥有自己的研发机构。商务部数据显示，中国去年高达2,183亿美元的高科技出口额当中，近90%都来自外商投资企业。
但是，研发支出加大的趋势正在推动中国相对于其他发展中国家，尤其是相对于印度的领先地位。印度也在积极寻求发展自己的创新能力。印度科技部数据显示，截至2005年3月，印度国内研发支出增长4.9%，达到49亿美元，占GDP的0.77%。
印度也在大力推动研发活动。但印度科技部高官拉玛穆蒂(V.S. Ramamurthy)说，因为政府预算方面的一系列限制，印度的研发投资规模与中国相比并不大。外商在印度研发领域的投资也落后于中国。虽然他表示投资规模并不是衡量研发成功与否的唯一标准，“但也的确让我们担心。”
复旦大学中国经济研究中心(China Center for Economic Studies)主任张军说，假以时日，“中国在这个领域的优势就会变得更加明显……中国比印度更高的吸引力会日渐加大。”
他说，中国的几点优势在于：雇请工程师和研究员的相对低廉成本；包括每年500万大学毕业生（科学和工程专业的毕业生占五分之一）在内的巨大人才库；中国13亿消费者之巨的广阔市场。中国还向海外学子提供了毕业回国的种种优惠措施，包括大笔研究经费和自己主持研发项目的机会。
王恩哥就是早期“海龟”之一。他曾是休斯敦大学的研究人员，1995年决定回国在中国科学院(Chinese Academy of Sciences)开展研究工作。他说，当时美国同事和亲朋好友都质疑他的决定，但他说很高兴自己做出了这样的选择。如今，王恩哥已经是中国科学院下辖的物理研究所(Institute of Physics)所长。中科院是中国顶级的研究机构，与多家外国公司都有研发合作合资企业。
王恩哥说，中国的“研究资金情况大有改善”，因此海外华人纷纷从哈佛大学(Harvard University)和劳伦斯伯克利国家实验室(Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)这样的机构回国工作。归国学人能确保得到足够的支持，“建立自己的实验室，认准一个研究方向研究十年，”他说，“别处很难找到这样的条件。”
中国科学院副院长陈竺说，现在越来越多的外国公司认识到中国并不仅仅是个市场，也是个拥有大量人才的国家。
摩托罗拉从1993年开始投资在中国开展低端研发活动，现在已经在中国5个城市拥有了16家研发中心，投资总额约5亿美元。这家美国公司现在拥有1,800多名中国工程师，今年有望突破2,000人。管理人士称，他们最近已经开始不仅研制针对中国市场，也瞄准海外市场的新款手机及其他产品了。
摩托罗拉在中国开发的A780手机允许手指书写输入，而不是用一只特制的笔。这款手机现在已经在美国和欧洲上市。另一款通过内置相机扫描名片联系信息，并输入联系人数据库的手机也有望在美国上市。摩托罗拉中国研究院院长庄靖表示，中国正在从制造中心向高端研发领域挺进。
1998年，微软在北京成立了基础研究院，是当时该公司在美国本土以外的第二家研究院。目前这家研究院有大约200名全职科学家，微软预计今年研究人员总数会增加一倍，到800名左右。
IBM位于北京的研究院里中国科学家带领开发的几项技术现在已经被海外业务采用。例如，“变声”软件──能将文本或者录音转换成另外一种声音。IBM中国研究中心院长李实恭(Thomas S. Li)说，“我们的研发现在负有全球性的使命。”
在国家主持的计算技术研究院(Institute of Computing Technology)里，工程师们正在挑战科技界的一大难题：设计电脑微处理器。虽然与英特尔公司(Intel Corp.)等行业领先者相比仍落后数年，但该研究所去年推出了自行研制的第二代微处理器，与90年代主流晶片的计算能力大致相当。今年计划推出第三代晶片，缩小与行业领先技术的差距。
在纳米技术、生物科技和基因改良农作物这些领域，中国的研发力量也日渐崭露头角。中国是第一个建立完整的水稻基因组数据库的国家，这个数据库帮助中国科学家们开发出了抗病虫害能力更强、产量也更高的作物品种。
瑞士制药公司诺华制药(Novartis AG)和Debiopharm SA已经与中国科学院上海药物所合作，展开对传统中药的研究，以期找到疟疾和老年痴呆症的治疗方法。Debiopharm中国业务主管Ju Li-ya说，中国科学研究领域这十年来进步非常显著。
