China has become a global innovation leader. According to the Global Innovation Index 2021 released by the World Intellectual Property Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, the country today ranks 12th in the world—from 29th in 2015. 

China poured 2.79 trillion yuan ($441.66 billion) into research and development in 2021, a year-on-year growth of 14.2 percent. Of this total, 76 percent was invested by businesses. The country now features nearly 300,000 hi-tech companies, and the number of people engaged in research and development stands at 5 million every year.

China also has 169 state-level hi-tech zones, generating 13 percent of the country's GDP with only 0.1 percent of land area.

Innovation-driven development is a major government strategy to guide economic and social development. China has produced a new vision of "innovative, coordinated, green and open development that is for everyone," in which innovation is a top priority. This means the country intends to transition from a factor- and investment-driven economy to one steered by innovation.

One crucial undertaking is the enhancement of overall independent innovation capability. China has intensified its basic research and achieved breakthroughs in key areas such as quantum computing. Take the example of Zuchongzhi 2.1, a superconducting quantum computing system named after a fifth-century Chinese mathematician that can work 10 million times faster than the world's current fastest supercomputer—Fugaku (Japan)—and make calculations 1 million times more complex than those made by Google's Sycamore processor.

Strategic high technologies, too, have witnessed progress. For instance, the first Chinese Mars probe, Tianwen-1, touched down on the red planet to commence scientific explorations in May 2021. The Xihe solar observation satellite successfully launched in October 2021. That same month, the Shenzhou-13 mission sent three taikonauts to the Tiangong space station for a six-month stay—the longest-ever duration in the country's manned space program. The Haidou-1 unmanned submersible has set several world records, including reaching the world's deepest ocean point in July 2020.

The central approach for breaking China's economic bottleneck lies in innovation and technology. The country must tear down all institutional barriers that restrict innovation, strengthen the translation of technological breakthroughs into enhanced productivity, and make innovation the primary propeller of growth.