EU ‘must step up Chinese connection’

The European Union needs to engage more with China to safeguard its future as a research and innovation leader, the European think tank Bruegel has said.

China has become a science and technology “powerhouse” in recent years, but the EU has not reacted sufficiently to this challenge and opportunity, a policy paper published by Bruegel yesterday said.

“China outperforms the EU in terms of expenditure on R&D as a share of its GDP, and already produces about the same number of scientific publications, and more PhDs in natural sciences and engineering, than the United States,” the paper stated. Twenty per cent of world R&D is now carried out in China, putting it second to the United States but with much faster growth.