China Research and Development Spending as a Share of GDP by Year 2000-2023

About This Dataset

Chinese gross domestic spending on research and development as a percentage of GDP, by year, from 2000 to 2023. Source is the World Bank series built on UNESCO Institute for Statistics data, covering business, government, higher education and non-profit research performed inside China.

✨ AI Insight

Chinese research intensity rose in every single year of this series, from 0.88 percent of GDP in 2000 to 2.58 percent in 2023, with no interruption for the financial crisis or the pandemic. Nearly tripling over 23 years with zero down years is not something any other large economy in this data does. The steepest year is 2009, up 0.22 points. One thing the chart does not show is China overtaking the world average: at 2.58 percent it is still marginally below the 2.60 percent global figure for 2023. But the gap has almost closed, from 1.17 points in 2000. China passed 1 percent in 2002 and 2 percent in 2015, so each additional point took about thirteen years.

Source: World Bank / UNESCO Institute for Statistics

Key Findings

Auto-computed highlights from this dataset

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2023 leads with 3 in 2000-2023.

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Average value in 2000-2023: 2 · median: 2.

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Gap in 2000-2023: 2023 is 2.9× larger than 2000.