China's listed firms spend more on R&D in 2018

BEIJING - Listed companies in China's A-share market saw robust growth in research and development (R&D) investment in 2018, according to the country's two major bourses.

Out of the 1,468 listed companies on the Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSE), 1,466 disclosed their 2018 financial information by the end of April, with firms in the real economy sector spending about 390 billion yuan ($57.92 billion) last year, up about 21 percent year-on-year, according to a report released Sunday by the SSE.

Over 60 Shanghai-listed firms saw the share of R&D spending of operation revenue exceed 10 percent.

A report from the Shenzhen Stock Exchange revealed that 2,156 of the 2,159 listed firms on the exchange had disclosed their annual financial information, spending about 344.387 billion yuan, up 22.3 percent year-on-year and marking the fourth consecutive year of marked increase of total R&D investment volume.

A total of 245 Shenzhen-listed firms saw the share of R&D spending of operation revenue exceed 10 percent, and 48 firms spent over 1 billion yuan in R&D last year, an increase of 10 firms from that of the previous year, the report showed.