Some 475 companies on the manufacturing top 500 reported their spending on R&D in 2010, compared with 458 the previous year. They spent a total of 261.933 billion yuan, 8.93 percent higher than the previous year's 240.469 billion yuan. Their R&D spending represented 2.03 percent of total sales, 0.08 percent higher than the previous year. Only four companies of the 475 companies spent more than 10 percent of their sales on R&D, while the number a year ago was five. Twenty-seven companies spent 5 to 10 percent of their sales on R&D, versus 35 the previous year. Some 39.37 percent of China's top 500 manufacturing companies spent less than 1 percent of sales on R&D. Although the overall scale of spending rose from the previous year, it was still far from satisfactory, leaving room for improvement as companies raise awareness of the significance of R&D to the development of a company. See Table 2-8 for R&D spending of China's top 500 manufacturing companies.

Table 2-8. R&D spending of China's Top 500 Manufacturing Companies

Table 2-9. R&D spending growth rate of China's top 500 manufacturing companies in 2010

Table 2-10. Growth rate of R&D spending of China's top 500 manufacturing companies in 2009