China on right path towards leading innovation power: US scholar

NEW YORK — China is "on the right path" towards becoming a leading power in global scientific and technological innovations, a renowned US scholar on technology and innovation policy has said.

"China has been doing extremely well in (the Global Innovation Index ranking). China has been going up consistently, in 2012, it was 34," said Soumitra Dutta, the founding dean of the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business and co-editor of the Global Innovation Index (GII), in a recent interview via phone with Xinhua.

China sustained its progress in the overall ranking, by securing the 22th spot, which makes it the first ever middle income country in the top 25 ranking, according to the GII 2017 report, published by the World Intellectual Property Organization in June.

"China has been investing for many years on some basic elements, for example, human capital and research and infrastructure...China is doing a lot of right things, China is on a right path," Dutta said.

China has incorporated the 2030 Agenda in China's 13th Five-Year Socio-economic Development Program and set the course of pursuing innovative, coordinated, green, open and shared development. And it has also launched the campaign of "Mass Innovation and Entrepreneurship," which entails a package of measures and policies to encourage creativity and entrepreneurship on an unprecedented scale.

"Overall what I found very impressive is that the government of China has a very clear attitude towards innovation being a national priority," Dutta added. "That's very important for the future competitiveness of China going forward, China can no longer be a low-cost producer. It has to actually be high value creative and to create value you need innovation."

The Indian American professor also called for closer international cooperation in pushing forward global innovation.

"Close cooperation is extremely important for innovation, innovation is a global phenomena, people collaborate across border, cross country, that's how innovation comes," he said.

The GII, which started in 2007, ranks the economies of 127 countries or territories using an innovation performance score out of 100 points, based on the country's institutions, human capital and research, infrastructure, market sophistication, business sophistication, knowledge and technology outputs, and finally creative outputs.