A fifth of the top 2,500 companies with the highest investment in research and development globally are Chinese, a Ministry of Science and Technology official said on Wednesday.

It shows that enterprises have become the most important engine for China's scientific and technological innovation.

Xu Jing, head of the ministry's Department of Strategic Planning, said 507 Chinese enterprises were ranked on the global R&D list in 2019. They were mostly concentrated in high-tech sectors including drone, e-commerce, cloud computing, artificial intelligence and mobile communications. In 2019, China had 225,000 high-tech enterprises, 1.8 times more than in 2015.

This is only one of the achievements Chinese enterprises have made during the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20) period. In the past five years, China has remarkably increased its technological and scientific innovation capacity. High-tech enterprises have also contributed a lot to the country's economic development.

Till Oct 14, 183 enterprises had gone public on the Science and Technology Innovation Board which was launched in June last year, among which 173 are high-tech enterprises.

Chinese enterprises pay great attention to independent technological innovation. The number of patent applications from China under the international Patent Cooperation Treaty increased from 30,000 in 2015 to 59,000 in 2019, the highest worldwide.

The rapid development of Chinese enterprises, especially the high-tech ones, has accelerated regional development leading to the formation of several vibrant innovation clusters.

According to the World Intellectual Property Organization, 17 Chinese regions now rank among the top 100 global innovation clusters, and the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, Beijing and Shanghai rank among the top 10.

Science and technology are the primary productive force, and innovation is the primary driving force behind development. Realizing the significance of independent innovation, especially under the complicated external circumstances, Chinese enterprises will focus on increasing their innovation capacity and contribute more to the country's economic growth in the future.