Private Agricultural Research Investments in China:Current Situation and Past Trend

Based on a national wide census data on private agricultural research investment,this study analyzes the trends of private agricultural research investment and its focused areas in China since 2000.The results show that annual growth rate of private agricultural research investment reached 27% in 2000-2006.Investment from private sector mainly focuses on the areas where intellectual property rights are relatively easier to be protected.Under current situations of rapid growth of investment and lack of research capacities,private investment is also often arranged through commission research and/or hiring part-time researchers from public sector.Despite its rapid growth in research investment in recent years,production of business of most enterprises still highly relies on technologies from public sector.The potential growth of private agricultural research investment is high.Government should enhance its efforts on the protection of intellectual property rights and provide better investment environment to further raise incentive of private sector's investment in agricultural research.Meantime,in order to facilitate the development of national agricultural technology innovation system,the priority of public research investment should move to basic and applied basic researches and focus on agricultural technologies that have difficult to protect their intellectual property rights.