By the end of 2018, China was home to a total of 4.18 million R&D personnel, ranking the first in the world, it was revealed during a national conference on the country’s scientific work held on Jan. 9.

Minister of Science and Technology, Wang Zhigang, introduced that China’s R&D spending was expected to account for 2.15 percent of China’s GDP in 2018.

He said China ranks second in the world in terms of the number of science essays and their citation frequency, and the country is now also the largest when it comes to total patent applications and licensing.

By 2018, China had established 181,000 high-tech firms and over 130,000 small- and medium-sized technology companies. The value of the country’s technology contracts in the last year hit 1.78 trillion yuan.

China’s high-tech industrial development zones have promoted high-quality economic development. In 2018, 168 such development zones created a total revenue of over 33 trillion yuan. Their exportation exceeded 3.3 trillion yuan, with a net profit of 2 trillion yuan. Over 400,000 enterprises were newly established in these zones last year.