BEIJING, March 24 -- China's National Natural Science Foundation (NSF) funded more than 39,000 programs in 2014 with a total investment of 25.1 billion yuan (about 4.09 billion U.S. dollars), they announced Tuesday.

NSF president Yang Wei said at a meeting that in 2015, the foundation will focus its resources on basic research and frontiers of science to upgrade the nation's ability to innovate.

The meeting adopted an initial targets for its development in 13th Five-Year Plan starting 2016, including one requiring investment in basic research and output from it to equal those of technological powers like the United States by 2020.

Specifically, the foundation said the investment in basic research should be expanded to account for 10 percent of R&D spending. The foundation also aims to nurture a group of leading scientists with international prestige.

China's spending on R&D has been rising rapidly since 1995 when the reading took up only 0.57 percent of GDP. In 2014, spending on R&D accounted for 2.09 percent of the GDP, which stood at 63.6 trillion yuan.