China's Basic Research Spending Reaches Record 7.08% of R&D in 2025

Yin Hejun, Party Secretary and Minister of Science and Technology, published a signed article proposing a series of measures to strengthen basic research.

The article disclosed that China ranks first in the world in the scale of its basic research talent, in the total number of research papers published, and in PCT international patent applications for many consecutive years, and second in the world in highly cited papers for many consecutive years. It also noted that China's basic researchers reached 597,000 full-time equivalent in 2024, that the number of highly cited scientists ranks second in the world, that the country has the largest reserve of talent in science, engineering, agriculture, and medicine, and that basic researchers account for about 8% of all R&D personnel.

On funding, the article stated that basic research spending accounted for 7.08% of total social R&D investment in 2025, the highest level on record. Enterprise investment in basic research accounted for less than 10% of all basic research funding, compared with about 35% in the United States and about 45% in Japan. On research conditions, China has built 45 world-leading national major science and technology infrastructure facilities, including the China Spallation Neutron Source and the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST), and has developed a range of high-end research instruments such as quadrupole time-of-flight tandem mass spectrometers and meter-class diffraction gratings.

On international cooperation, the article disclosed that China has established science and technology cooperation relationships with more than 160 countries and regions, signed 120 intergovernmental science and technology cooperation agreements, and joined more than 200 science and technology-related international organizations and multilateral mechanisms. China has led the launch of international big science programs including Deep-time Digital Earth, Ocean Negative Carbon Emissions, and the Human Proteome Navigation program, built a data network covering 122 countries and 12 disciplines, and participates deeply in international big science projects such as the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor and the Square Kilometre Array radio telescope.

The article proposed steadily increasing the scale of central and local government basic research funding, leveraging enterprise investment in basic research, opening channels for social forces to establish science funds and donate to basic research, expanding paths for science and technology finance to support basic research, building a funding system with clear positioning, standardized management, and efficient allocation, and optimizing a funding mechanism that combines competitive support with stable support. On science and technology infrastructure, the article proposed coordinating the layout of major science and technology infrastructure with major national research tasks, concentrating efforts on high-end research instruments, cultivating leading research instrument enterprises, building world-class science journals, and creating internationally competitive science publishing groups. It also called for advancing artificial intelligence-enabled research innovation, improving infrastructure such as computing power and data, expanding intelligent application scenarios in scientific research, and carrying out foundational work such as experimental materials, scientific data, science and technology resource surveys, and scientific expeditions.

On talent, the article proposed strengthening independent training of basic research talent, optimizing the basic disciplines education system, increasing support for young talent conducting basic research early in their careers, providing long-term stable support for a group of outstanding young talents, exploring talent support models based on continued funding after competitive selection and long-cycle funding based on milestone assessments, and continuously increasing efforts to attract high-level international talent. On the research ecosystem, the article proposed establishing an originality-oriented evaluation system and incentive mechanism, deepening reform of the evaluation of basic research projects, talent, and institutions, improving mechanisms such as representative achievement evaluation, long-cycle evaluation, international peer review, and team evaluation, continuously deepening the governance of problems such as the four onlys, academic titles, and academic sectarianism, tackling the special rectification of reviewers being lobbied, and cracking down on academic misconduct.

The article proposed deepening and expanding international science and technology partnership programs, making good use of exchange and cooperation mechanisms such as intergovernmental joint committees on science and technology cooperation, and supporting the launch of multilateral research and exchange mechanism networks. It called for strengthening research on major scientific questions in fields such as climate change, energy and environment, and life and health, leading the launch and organization of international big science programs and big science projects, carrying out international open cooperation projects on major research infrastructure, and supporting the establishment of international science and technology organizations in China. It also called for deepening the implementation of Belt and Road science and technology people-to-people exchange, the International Young Scientist program, and the China-Europe Young Scientists Exchange Program, and increasing the implementation of global-oriented scientific research funds.