Own 484,300 patent of invention, Chinese Top 500 Enterprises perform well in Research and Development

2020/09/30

 

On September 28, China Enterprise Confederation and China Enterprise Directors Association released the List of China's Top 500 Companies 2020. Data shows that more and more large enterprises are making great efforts from increasing investment in Research and development, and protecting intellectual property rights. China's top 500 companies in 2020 invested a total of 1.0750406 trillion yuan in R&D, has increased 10.12% from the previous year. A total of 484,300 invention patents were issued, an increase of 19.40 percent over the previous year. It is particularly worth mentioning that the telecommunications equipment manufacturing industry ranks the first in terms of R&D intensity, per capita R&D expenditure and average R&D expenditure.
 
At the summit of China's top 500 Enterprises 2020, the entrepreneurs, experts and scholars attending the Forum discussed the theme of "Cultivating new opportunities and Opening a new Chapter: Development of Big Enterprises under change". Wang Zhongyu, President of the China Enterprise Confederation and China Entrepreneurs Association, said that large enterprises are the mainstay of the national economy. The greater the crisis is, the more we need to undertake and be capable of outstanding achievement.
 
Traditional industries account for a relatively high proportion among the list
 
From this year's data, the Top 500 companies on the scale and efficiency growth momentum good. The revenue of China's top 500 companies in 2020 reached 86.02 trillion yuan, an increase of 6.92 trillion yuan or 8.75% over the previous year. Net profit reached 3.892.414 trillion yuan, 360.319 billion yuan more than the previous year, an increase of 10.20%.
 
Comparing them with the World's top 500 companies, the total revenue of Chinese companies on the list is $1.5 trillion less than that of American companies. The average profit margin of American listed companies is 8.61%, while that of Chinese listed companies is 5.33%. From the perspective of industry distribution, China's listed companies have a high proportion of traditional industries. The US, Japan, Europe and other countries have obvious advantages in high-end manufacturing and occupy a core position at the high end of the global value chain.
 
Miao Rong, Chief Researcher of The China Enterprise Confederation, told The Economic Daily that China has the most complete industrial system in the world, with the exception of a few fields, which are distributed in the vast majority of industrial chains. However, a prominent weak point is that many enterprises are at the middle and low end of the industrial chain and value chain. This has a significant impact on the international competitiveness of China's industries and enterprises, many Chinese enterprises have to rely on low costs to cope with international enterprise competition.
 
Wang Ji-ming, Vice President of China Enterprise Confederation, Chinese Academy of Engineering Academician, said that in recent years, Chinese enterprises carried out a lot of fruitful work in product quality and efficiency improvement, digital construction, green manufacturing and clean energy development, energy conservation and emissions reduction, poverty alleviation and poverty reduction. Furthermore, Chinese enterprises constantly improve the ability of innovative research and development, made great efforts to pursue the international advanced level, and have achieved initial success in high-quality development. However, there are a significant number of enterprises in China, and the level of development is quite different, so it is a long way to achieve sustainable development.
 
Investment in Research and Development continues to grow
 
As a matter of fact, more and more large enterprises are making efforts from increasing investment in Research and Development and protecting intellectual property rights. Among China's top 500 companies in 2020, 431 provided research and development data, five more than the previous year. The total investment in R&D was 1.0750406 trillion yuan, an increase of 10.12% over the previous year. The R&D investment of China's top 500 enterprises in 2020 accounted for 63.55% of the R&D expenditure of enterprises nationwide in 2019 (1.692.18 trillion yuan). This shows that large enterprises have increased their willingness to invest in R&D, and most of them continue to increase their investment in R&D.
 
Tian Zhilong, professor and doctoral supervisor of The School of Management of Huazhong University of Science and Technology, believes that the continuous increase of enterprise R&D investment is a very good signal, but many enterprises, to a large extent, imitate the benchmark enterprises and are in a state of following. Independent innovation needs to be strengthened to drive more applied research and basic research to blossom and bear fruit.
 
Since 2010, the average R&D intensity of China's top 500 companies has decreased first and then increased. It is particularly worth mentioning that the telecommunications equipment manufacturing industry ranks the first in terms of R&D intensity, per capita R&D expenditure and average R&D expenditure. Guangdong enterprises continue to lead in the regional R & D strength ranking.
 
396 of China's top 500 companies in 2020 provided patent data, unchanged from the previous year. These companies owned 1.2393 million patents, has increased 11.85% from the previous year. A total of 484,300 invention patents were issued, an increase of 19.40 percent over the previous year. Huawei continues to take the lead in terms of the number of patents and invention patents. Of the total patents, invention patents accounted for 39.08%, 2.47 percentage points higher than that of the previous year, an increase for seven consecutive years, and the quality of patents has steadily improved.
 
Increased investment in Research and Development has given these companies a voice in industry standard-setting. Among the listed companies, 332 have reported their participation in the formulation of standards, and have participated in 63,573 standards over the years. Among them, it participated in the formulation of 55182 domestic standards and 7571 international standards. From the perspective of the industry, the communication equipment manufacturing industry is obviously in a leading position. It has participated in the formulation of 5,354 international standards in total, far higher than the telecommunications service industry which ranks the second (1,128), showing a relatively prominent industrial influence.
 
"The key to enterprise innovation is to develop core technologies. For example, the price of lithium hexafluorophosphate has dropped from more than 1 million yuan per ton to less than 100,000 yuan, but thanks to the mastery of core technologies, the cost has been greatly reduced, so we still have a 30 percent gross profit margin." Said Li Shijiang, chairman of Dofluoride Co.,Ltd.
 
Actively promote digital transformation
 
In recent years, China's industrial Internet has developed rapidly and become an important platform for digital transformation of many enterprises. According to He Wei, deputy director of the Policy Research Institute of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, in view of the development of the digital economy, the use of new technologies can improve the original production boundaries of enterprises, thus realizing the increase of efficiency and output. This is the impetus for enterprises to actively promote digital transformation.
 
According to Wei Dazen, Vice President of Inspur Group, Inspur group will achieve sales revenue of 112.3 billion yuan in 2019. There are mainly four aspects to promote the digital sector: cloud data center, smart city for government and enterprises, smart enterprise for enterprise digital transformation, and cloud service and big data.
At present, Inspur's server market share has reached 40% in China, and the market share of artificial intelligence server has exceeded 50%. At present, Inspur serves more than 100 enterprises, including 56% of central enterprises, 38% of state-owned enterprises and several Fortune 500 enterprises.
 
Enterprise digital transformation depends on infrastructure construction. At the sub-forum of "New Infrastructure helps smart enterprises advance to higher level", many entrepreneurs, experts and scholars expressed their expectations for smart enterprises.
 
Zhang Jia, general manager of Xiamen Yitong Software Technology Co., LTD. Yitong Consulting Co., LTD., believes that in the new infrastructure application process, the "technology + infrastructure application scenario" is effectively integrated. For example, 5G technology can realize the collection and transmission of underlying data, data storage and corresponding data services through data centers, improve corresponding algorithms through artificial intelligence technology, and finally achieve integrated application in the industrial field through industrial Internet technology. In the future, enterprises do not necessarily pursue the advancement of a certain hardware infrastructure construction, but should pay more attention to the integration of technology and infrastructure application scenarios.
 

Wang Zhongyu also said that in the era of digitalization and intelligence, data will become an important asset, products will be replaced by scenes, and industries can be covered by industrial ecology. Only by following the trend and following the beat of the era can enterprises have a bright future.