East Asia

Investment in R&D in East Asian countries is rising rapidly. Although China and Japan have the largest economies in the region and therefore receive the most attention,  Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan have established themselves as strong proponents of science R&D. Malaysia’s R&D investments have grown rapidly since 2011 to total almost 2% of the country’s GDP in 2015.

The business sector is the largest investor in R&D in South Korea and Taiwan, while contributing approximately 50% of R&D investments in Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore, similar to the UK and US. Apart from China and Japan, South Korea has the greatest number of researchers in the region, followed by Singapore and Taiwan.

Last year, South Korea’s scientific article output was significant, with 65,000 research articles published in the Scopus database and contributing almost 3.5% of global article output. Malaysia’s output volume jumped in 2009 and has maintained a steady rise, representing over 1% of global scientific articles published in 2016. Taiwan is the only East Asian country whose output is decreasing as a share of world research.

Source: Nature

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