Analysis of R&D performance of China's manufacturing industry based on DEA

Since the implementation of the strategy revitalizing China through science and education, the expenditure of research and development (R&D) has been increasing year by year. As one of the main industries, manufacturing represents a substantial share of total R&D expenditure. However, the improvement of manufacturing innovation capability depends not only on raising R&D expenditure, but also on promoting R&D efficiency. So an evaluation of R&D efficiency in thirteen manufacturing industries in China has been carried out, using the non-parametric technique of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). The results show that under constant returns-to-scale, only three industries are efficient and the remaining industries are inefficient. A further study shows that the inefficient industries are caused mainly by scale inefficiency. Therefore, the internal management should be strengthened and the structure of the resources should be optimized to improve R&D performance.