[国际新闻] 中国人的创新都是“纸老虎”

2011-07-28 环球网- B, [% G; H8 j6 ?6 e

美国《华尔街日报》7月28日文章，原题：中国人的创新是纸老虎中国即将在创新领域超过美国和其他发达经济体的消息，几乎没有哪一周不见诸报端。随着中国专利申请数量的增加，中国开始推动高科技产品出口，西方国家的命运已被注定。或许故事会这么发展下去。但事实却截然相反。

　　无可否认，中国研发费用占GDP（国民生产总值）的比值由2002年的1.1%增至2010年的1.5%，在2020年有望增至2.5%。在2010 年，中国研发费用占世界总研发费用的12.3%，仅次于美国，美国所占比例稳定在34%-35%之间。根据世界知识产权组织的数据，中国发明家在2008 年共提出203481项专利申请，仅次于日本（502054项）和美国（400769项）。
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　　中国超过95%的国内专利申请由中国知识产权局受理，但大多数只是打着“创新”的旗号，实际上只是对现有设计进行了微小变化。更具说服力的评判方式应当是获得中国以外国家的认可——让美国、欧洲和日本的世界主要专利局认可中国发明的专利申请和授权。从这点上讲，中国任重而道远。4 T+ c& c: o$ x/ @! B

　　最具说服力的证据就是获得以上三方专利局受理或授权的中国专利申请的数量。根据经济合作与发展组织的数据，在迄今有数据可查的2008年，中国仅有473项专利申请获得了以上三方专利局的受理或授权，而美国拥有14399项，欧洲游14525项，日本有15446项。

　　在2010年，获得外国专利局受理或授权的中国专利申请数量只占总数的1%。中国对创新的投入和产出何以产生如此大的差距？从一方面看，这可能只是简单的时间问题。创新不仅仅需要新成果，还需要有丰富的先验知识积累。作为科技前沿的新手，中国尚需要数年时间来构筑知识库。此外，偏重于数量而非质量以及偏重于具体实地应用而非国际标准，也给中国的科研文化带来严重影响。由此产生的结果不仅仅是渐进主义，还有学术造假。中国的教育体系则是中国科研文化面临的另一个严重挑战，因为它强调的是死记硬背的学习方式，而非创造性的问题解决方式。! r: C# I: j' p5 x4 H6 U4 Y

　　诚然，中国在诸如电信技术等领域取得了长远进步。但全面地看，中国要想成为一个全球性的创新国家，仍有相当长的路要走。% O! h! d" `0 a( L" B# `

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Chinese Innovation Is a Paper Tiger    * JULY 28, 2011csuchen.de1 N! }" g+ @1 n( \7 c( Z

A closer look at China's patent filings and R&D spending reveals a country that has a long way to go.csuchen.de: g3 U  I0 d$ G9 [* F
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Hardly a week goes by without a headline pronouncing that China is about to overtake the U.S. and other advanced economies in the innovation game. Patent filings are up, China is exporting high-tech goods, the West is doomed. Or so goes the story line. The reality is very different.
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To be sure, China's R&D expenditure increased to 1.5% of GDP in 2010 from 1.1% in 2002, and should reach 2.5% by 2020. Its share of the world's total R&D expenditure, 12.3% in 2010, was second only to the U.S., whose share remained steady at 34%-35%. According to the World Intellectual Property Organization, Chinese inventors filed 203,481 patent applications in 2008. That would make China the third most innovative country after Japan (502,054 filings) and the U.S. (400,769).csuchen.de7 t' {+ X2 d$ q) R

But more than 95% of the Chinese applications were filed domestically with the State Intellectual Property Office—and the vast majority cover "innovations" that make only tiny changes on existing designs. A better measure is to look at innovations that are recognized outside China—at patent filings or grants to China-origin inventions by the world's leading patent offices, the U.S., the EU and Japan. On this score, China is way behind.& \3 F0 O, E: {
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The most compelling evidence is the count of "triadic" patent filings or grants, where an application is filed with or patent granted by all three offices for the same innovation. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, in 2008, the most recent year for which data are available, there were only 473 triadic patent filings from China versus 14,399 from the U.S., 14,525 from Europe, and 13,446 from Japan. ! Q- ]5 W/ V: K3 ^- g

Starkly put, in 2010 China accounted for 20% of the world's population, 9% of the world's GDP, 12% of the world's R&D expenditure, but only 1% of the patent filings with or patents granted by any of the leading patent offices outside China. Further, half of the China-origin patents were granted to subsidiaries of foreign multinationals.

Why is there such a big gap between innovation inputs and outputs? Partly it may simply be a matter of time. Innovation requires not just new efforts but also a rich stock of prior knowledge. As new players on the technology frontier, Chinese organizations will need several years to build the requisite stock of knowledge.6 C: p2 c6 L' C1 ^& T

But other factors are also at work. For instance, the allocation of government funds for R&D projects is highly politicized. As Yigong Shi and Yi Rao, deans of Life Sciences at Tsinghua and Peking Universities respectively, observed in a recent editorial in Science magazine, for grants ranging from tens to hundreds of millions of yuan, "it is an open secret that doing good research is not as important as schmoozing with powerful bureaucrats and their favorite experts.. . . . China's current research culture . . . wastes resources, corrupts the spirit, and stymies innovation."csuchen.de3 b: a: y: C3 J- t( g2 Z% }

China's research culture also suffers heavily from a focus on quantity over quality and the use of local rather than international standards to assess and reward research productivity. The result is a pandemic of not just incrementalism but also academic dishonesty.
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A 2009 survey by the China Association for Science and Technology reported that half of the 30,078 respondents knew at least one colleague who had committed academic fraud. Such a culture inhibits serious inquiry and wastes resources.
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China's educational system is another serious challenge because it emphasizes rote learning rather than creative problem solving. When Microsoft opened its second-largest research lab (after Redmond, Wash.) in Beijing, it realized that while the graduates it hired were brilliant, they were too passive when it came to research inquiry.

The research directors attacked this problem by effectively requiring each new hire to come up with a project he or she wanted to work on. Microsoft's approach is more the exception than the rule among R&D labs in China, which tend to be more top-down.) W6 }) m! A& x* X
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Yes, China is making rapid strides in some areas such as telecommunications technology. However, on an across-the-board basis, it still has quite some distance to cover before becoming a global innovation power.