Against a belief that industrial China is good at copying and stealing but not much else, in fact the government has been pushing hard since at least 2006 to pour money into research and development. In the last two years in fact, China has surpassed Japan to become the world’s second-biggest spender on R&D behind only the United States, which is forecast to pour US$436 billion into industrial research spending compared to China’s US$198 billion, It should be pointed out that, as with everything else in China, it can do research and development from a far cheaper cost base, in everything from scientists’ salaries to the cost of the buildings they work in to the equipment they use.