Evolution and Features of China’s Central Government Funding System for Basic Research

Basic research is believed to be a crucial factor for building national innovation capacity and therefore was perceived as a key battleground for national technological and economic competition. Since the economic reform and opening up in the late 1970s, China has made great achievements in building up its national research system. However, the lacking capabilities to conduct ground-breaking scientific work remain one of the daunting challenges for the country. How to restructure its funding system for basic research so to reinvigorate its indigenous innovation capacity has been one of the main concerns for the Chinese government in recent years. To address this, the paper proposes a conceptual framework to analyze how China’s central government funding system for basic research has evolved since 1985. The paper concludes with a discussion of the identified problems and challenges that China is facing in its current funding system for basic research.

Building a culture of innovation in learning and teaching technologies through an innovators group

Innovation was seen as crucial for universities even before the COVID-19 global pandemic, to widen participation within massification strategies, to deliver graduates that meet the needs of economies and to justify increased fees in response to reduced government funding. Innovation will become increasingly important as universities contribute to the post-pandemic recovery of their communities and nations and need to find new avenues for research funding with less reliance on governments. In this paper, we describe our first steps towards developing a culture of innovation in learning and teaching across science, health, and engineering disciplines by bringing together and empowering a group of mostly junior academics. We describe achievements of this group, indicate key success factors, and discuss next steps.

Alternatives to funding scientific research from the viewpoint of Academic Experts at Yemeni University: بدائل تمويل البحث العلمي من وجهة نظر الخبراء الأكاديميين في الجامعات اليمنية

The current research aimed to identify alternatives to funding scientific research from the point of view of academic experts in Yemeni universities, And the modified Delphi method were used, with the participation of a sample of academic experts in Yemeni universities, In the first round, consisted (34) male and female experts, and in the second round (30) male and female experts, They were chosen in a purposive manner, the questionnaire was used as a research tool, which included (37) items distributed over two axes. The research had several results, the most important of which were: All research axes were given a high degree of importance. The axis of obstacles to funding alternatives for scientific research obtained a high degree, As for the alternatives to funding scientific research, they all got a high degree of importance, The field of other financing alternatives ranked first, the field of self-financing alternatives ranked second, and in the third and last place comes the alternatives to government funding, The research recommended several recommendations, including: Paying attention to scientific research Increasing the share of scientific research from country budget.

CAN GOVERNMENT FUNDING REVIVE ZOMBIE ENTERPRISES? EVIDENCE FROM LISTED CHINESE MANUFACTURING ENTERPRISES

This study tests how different types of government funding affect the recovery of zombie enterprises in the manufacturing sector of China. The results show that funding for production and innovation can revive zombie enterprises in expanding industries, while funding for interest cannot. Furthermore, funding for production and innovation can share costs, increase investment in selling or innovation, and promote the scaling down of businesses through external governance effects, helping zombie enterprises to recover. Finally, none of the funding types can revive zombie enterprises in contracting industries; these can recover only through access to larger overseas markets.

An Analysis on the Influence of R&D Fiscal and Tax Subsidies on Regional Innovation Efficiency: Empirical Evidence from China

To promote the National Mid-andLong-Term Scientific and Technical Development Program, utilizing the technical innovation data from 30 provinces of China from2002–2016, this paper evaluates the inter-provincial differences of China’s regional innovation efficiency from four aspects of technical efficiency, efficiency index change, returns to scale, and projection analysis by using the DEA-Malmquist index method and constructs of the DEA-Tobit random response model to explore the impact of government funding on regional innovation efficiency. The research results show that: (1) The local development of regional innovation efficiency in China is unbalanced, and the level of pure technical efficiency restricts the improvement of innovation efficiency. (2) In the prophase of the scientific and technical development plan, technological progress has led to the growth of total factor productivity, resulting in the formation of scale effect; in the later stage, the scale return shows an overall increasing trend, and the continuous expansion of technological scale and opportunities has improved the regional innovation efficiency. (3) The R&D fiscal and tax subsidies have policy sustainability, and the direct government funding can significantly improve innovation efficiency, while the enterprises investment is opposite, and the pretax additional deduction has a negative but not significant impact. The government should give priority to direct subsidy and supplemented by tax preference, making reasonable policy allocations to expand the policy effect.

Bridging the ‘Valley of Death’: Can Agile Principles Be Applied in Industry-Academia Research and Innovation Projects?

Government funding supports industry-academia research and innovation projects in Norway, sharing the risk of the research component in innovation. However, funding alone may not be sufficient to overcome potential differences in collaborative agendas and ways of working. As a result, positive research outcomes often get stuck in the valley of death, instead of ending up as successful innovations that create value. To contribute to bridging the valley of death, we investigated the importance of six agile principles for collaborative industry-academia research and innovation projects, abbreviated IPN in Norway. The study was limited to the manufacturing sector. We surveyed 124 IPN project leaders (70 from industry; 54 from academia) to evaluate the importance of the knowledge management practices associated with the six agile principles across the three project stages. The statistical analyses indicate the consistency of the agile principles throughout the project stages. This means that agile principles are relevant for IPN projects and can be used as guidelines for improvement of the knowledge management practices. Moreover, the study identifies the agile principles that are perceived as most important to use in different stages of a project. It also identifies the different perceptions of the importance of agile principles of the project leaders from industry and academia. These findings can support project leaders who are implementing agile principles to industry-academia research and innovation projects. The results from the study can also support national and federal research/innovation councils in decision-making when assessing industrial research applications.

At what cost?

With childcare in the UK now being some of the most expensive in the world, questions about the sustainability of settings and the impact of funding on social mobility are at the centre of policy debates. Sue Cowley takes a look at the current situation with government funding and assesses the impact of the 30 hours entitlement.

How COVID-19 has changed medical research funding

Here, we consider how the lessons we learned in 2020 from funding COVID-19 research could have a long-term impact on the way that we fund medical research. We look back at how UK government funding for COVID-19 medical research evolved, beginning with the early calls for proposals in February that pump-primed funding for vaccines and therapeutics, and culminating in the launch of the government's National Core Studies programme in October. We discuss how the research community mobilized to submit and review grants more rapidly than ever before, against a background of laboratory and office closures. We also highlight the challenges of running clinical trials as the number of hospitalized patients fluctuated with different waves of the disease.