China increases R&D investment, still lags behind developed countries

　　 China's investment in research and development has consistently gone up with the country seeking to find a new competitive edge as the era of cheap labor and fast exports ends, a report showed on Monday.

　　R&D expenditure reached 1.3 trillion yuan (204 billion U.S. dollars) in 2014, up 9.9 percent from the previous year, according to the report jointly published by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), the Ministry of Science and Technology and The Ministry of Finance.

　　Last year's R&D expenditure equaled 2.05 percent of the country's gross domestic product (GDP), marking its second straight year above the 2-percent mark.

　　With R&D spending at 1 trillion yuan, enterprises were the biggest contributor, the report shows.

　　Despite being the world's second biggest R&D spender behind the United States, China still lags behind developed countries which normally spend 3 to 4 percent of their GDP on R&D, according to NBS statistician Guan Xiaojing.