Over the course of some 30 years of economic reforms, China has adopted a wide array of policies designed to enhance its technological capability and foster growth. This reform process culminated in China's launch in March 2006 of its ambitious National Mid- and Long-Term Science and Technology Development Plan for 2006–2020 (the Plan). The Plan represents the ambition of sustaining economic growth and social development through homegrown innovation and increased government-led R&D investments. Among its various priorities, the Plan sets forth a bold quantitative target for China's innovation performance: by 2020, increasing to 2.5% China'sratio of gross expenditures on R&D to GDP. Additional targets of the Plan include increasing the share of technological progress in economic growth to 60%, increasing business expenditures on R&D, and achieving a top-five world ranking in both the number of invention patents granted to Chinese citizens and the number of citations of international scientific papers. Complementing the Plan, China aims to develop indigenous innovation in new products and nurture new industries so as to achieve a technological `leapfrog' through 12 `mega' science and technology projects (such as the manufacture of large commercial aircraft and the development of space technology including moon exploration). In identifying projects like these, China has signaled that it will focus on specific areas for development while deferring action on others.
