Basic research: How to activate the source of innovation in the next ten years

  Basic research is the source of scientific and technological innovation. It is necessary to improve the stable support mechanism and substantially increase investment... On March 5, Premier Li Keqiang reiterated basic research in his government work report.

  "The country has really attached great importance to basic research in recent years." Yuan Yaxiang, member of the Standing Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said excitedly.

Taking his subject as an example, he said that “mathematics and applied research” has become one of the “14th Five-Year” national key R&D plans recently deployed by the Ministry of Science and Technology. “1.5 billion yuan will be invested in the next five years, which is very powerful.”

  Not only that, since 2019, my country has established 13 national applied mathematics centers.

  "This shows that the importance of basic research is no longer necessary. We need to further think about how to do better in basic research during the 14th Five-Year Plan period and a longer period in the future." Yuan Yaxiang said.

  "my country's innovation is undergoing a transition from quantitative accumulation to qualitative breakthroughs. How to increase investment in basic research, optimize expenditure structure, improve the quality and efficiency of basic research, and enhance original innovation capabilities has become an urgent problem to be solved." Member of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, Representative Lu Wei, a researcher at the Development Research Center of the State Council, told a reporter from Science and Technology Daily.

  Leading the future and anchoring the strategic direction of basic research

  "The most important issue that our basic research needs to solve is how to build the ability to lead the future as a strategic guide for my country's basic research and technological innovation." Zhao Yuliang, director of the National Nanoscience Center and member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told the reporter of Science and Technology Daily. At the same time, it is necessary to reform our country's basic research administration and scientific research implementation for a long time with "tactics" to deal with "strategic" thinking mode.

  For example, Zhao Yuliang said that nanotechnology is a typical underlying science and technology. Elsevier's analysis report shows that in the past 20 years, there were 960 most significant frontier basic scientific research directions in the whole discipline, 89% of which were related to nanotechnology.

Nanotechnology has a wide radiation area and supports the innovation and development of many interdisciplinary fields. Innovation capabilities are on the ramp that needs to be surpassed.

  "We hope that the country will implement a sustained and stable policy, take continuous investment in basic research as a national policy, and build nanoscience and technology as a platform discipline that supports the development of the country's cutting-edge technology and the underlying technological innovation and development." Zhao Yuliang said, from policy makers to It is important for scientific researchers to establish long-term strategic thinking.

  In this regard, member Yang Wei, former director of the National Natural Science Foundation of China and academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said that basic research in the new era should highlight motivation and support, forward-looking and leading, accommodating and disruptive.

He believes that these are the key issues that the country must consider when formulating basic research-related plans.

  "The science and technology community has been calling for a master plan for basic research." Yang Wei said that the "decade of action plan for basic research" under study has therefore attracted much attention.

  "It is important to pay special attention to the planning of basic research to solve several difficult problems as much as possible: the judgment of the success rate, who should be used for planning, the extent of the planning, and how to test the effectiveness of the planning." Yang Wei said.

  "The characteristics of basic research determine that it is difficult for us to propose specific and detailed indicators for a specific research project, or to foresee its development. Therefore, the basic research plan should be planned mainly in terms of scale, mechanism and capacity, such as How much should we invest in basic research in another ten years, rather than detailed scientific goals." Yang Wei emphasized.

  How to make up for the "less" part of the investment that is increased every year

  As Yang Wei said, investment in basic research is also the focus of the scientific and technological community.

  At the previous press conference of the State Council Information Office, Ye Yujiang, Director of the Basic Research Department of the Ministry of Science and Technology, revealed that during the "13th Five-Year Plan" period, my country's basic research funding has basically doubled, with a double-digit increase, reaching 16.9. %, reached 133.6 billion yuan in 2019, accounting for the first time that the proportion of R&D expenditure in the whole society exceeded 6%.

According to a communiqu issued by the National Bureau of Statistics recently, 150.4 billion yuan will be spent on basic research in 2020.

  "Although my country's R&D expenditures are currently the second largest in the world, the proportion of basic research investment is relatively low. Although basic research accounts for more than 6% of R&D expenditures, compared with some major scientific and technological countries and innovative countries in the world, there are still Big gap." Lu Wei thinks.

  Fortunately, Premier Li Keqiang emphasized that it is necessary to substantially increase investment. This year, the central government's basic research expenditure will increase by 10.6%.

  "We need to increase investment in basic research through multiple channels." Lu Wei called for a moderate increase in the proportion of basic research in fiscal R&D expenditures, and in particular, local governments should be encouraged to increase basic research expenditures.

At the same time, encourage and guide capable companies to increase investment.

  In Lu Wei's view, at present, some Chinese enterprises have entered the forefront of industry technology, and they urgently need basic research support to carry out cutting-edge technological innovation.

She believes that, on the one hand, it is necessary to increase the income tax deduction ratio for basic research expenditures and encourage companies to increase basic research expenditures.

On the other hand, support enterprises to participate in major national scientific research plans, strengthen industry-university-research cooperation; further expand the scale of enterprise joint basic research funds, and encourage social forces to directly donate or establish funds to support basic research in universities and scientific research institutions.

  The Central Committee of Jiu San Society stated in the "Proposal on Strengthening the Role of R&D Expenses Super Deduction Policy to Promote Enterprises to Carry out Basic and Applied Research" that the R&D expense extra deduction policy is an important policy measure for the state to encourage enterprises to increase R&D investment, but it still There are problems of insufficient accuracy and unclear guidance.

  The proposal suggests adopting a more precise and structured combination of additional deduction policies, encouraging companies, especially leading companies, to conduct basic research and applied research, and increasing the percentage of additional deductions for R&D expenditures for basic research and applied research by companies to 150% , Widen the gap between it and the 75% deduction ratio for enterprise experimental development, and form a clear guide to guide enterprises to increase basic and applied research; increase the deduction ratio for technology-based SMEs, and increase the deduction ratio for technology-based SMEs Increase from 75% to 100%, and so on.

  Scientific evaluation calls for classified management and stable support

  Lu Wei also emphasized that the goals of free-exploring basic research and demand-oriented basic research are different, and there must be differences in management, and stable long-term support must be maintained.

  Academician Yuan Yaxiang felt the same way.

He said that purely free exploration of basic research (such as mathematics, theoretical physics, etc.) is often not suitable for organizing large teams, it is not appropriate to write clear research goals and technical routes, and it is usually difficult to get support for large projects.

Due to the particularity of disciplines, basic disciplines need to be supported differently from other disciplines in terms of funding.

  He suggested that in talent evaluation, subject evaluation, and project review, the respective characteristics of each basic science should be fully considered, and the internationally accepted practices of each subject should be adopted.

For basic disciplines (such as mathematics, theoretical physics, etc.) that are not suitable for establishing national laboratories, it is recommended to allocate corresponding funding support forms according to the characteristics of the disciplines.

  "Choose a small number of high-level scientific research institutes engaged in basic scientific research to give them long-term, sufficient funding support and full academic autonomy to build them into an internationally renowned scientific research institution." Yuan Yaxiang said.

  Academician Zhou Zhonghe of the Chinese Academy of Sciences also emphasized the importance of stable support.

"For example, for state key laboratories in disciplines that have relatively few management and operating mechanisms, they should focus on stabilizing and increasing their scale. The focus is on stabilizing the strengths of basic research and maintaining the overall soundness of basic research."

  Taking into account the 30 years of exploration and accumulated successful experience of the State Key Laboratory, the current scale is seriously disproportionate to the rapid development of my country’s science and technology, Zhou Zhonghe also suggested that in the next five years, there should be no need for national key laboratories in disciplines. Give vigorous support falteringly.