(Yicai) Jan. 29 -- Almost all investors who took part in a quarterly survey that gauges their sentiment and expectations in China's domestic equity market said the country's technological development will join the ranks of developed nations in the next 10 years.

Nearly 94 percent of responders believe China will match developed countries in tech development over the next decade, according to the findings of the latest Cheung Kong Investor Sentiment Survey released yesterday.

The fourth-quarter CKISS was conducted by the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business last month, with about 2,100 valid responses from around 1,300 retail investors and 800 financial industry practitioners.

China's economy is crossing the middle-income trap, Liu Jin, an accounting and finance professor and director of CKGSB's Investment Research Center, said at a conference for the release of the latest report. In the process, the country needs to transform from an economic development model with relatively low tech content to a high-tech economy, Liu noted.

Chinese investors' confidence in China's future tech development is closely linked to their attitude toward the country's economic outlook, which in turn impacts their expectations for the domestic stock market, Liu pointed out.

Nearly 80 percent of the surveyed investors acknowledged that artificial intelligence could bring about disruptive changes, Liu said. In contrast, only around 60 percent held this view when the first survey for 2025 was conducted a year ago, Liu added.

In addition, about 60 percent of respondents in the latest survey said AI development would not trigger a massive wave of unemployment, highlighting Chinese investors' overall positive and rational attitude toward tech progress from another perspective, Liu said.

Liu pointed out a distinctive feature of research and development and innovation in China. The majority of R&D spending comes from the corporate sector, with the proportion of enterprise-funded R&D expenditure in the total such spending rising to 72 percent in 2015 to 2023 from 69 percent in 2005 to 2014, Liu noted.

Chinese entrepreneurs exercise strict cost control in R&D activities, Liu said in an interview with Yicai. While this has kept China's R&D conversion efficiency at a high global level and made innovative products highly cost-effective, it has also led to its insufficient investment in basic scientific research, which may induce involution in some industries, Liu added.

To truly break free from involution in innovation for China's tech development, companies need to show greater resolve and courage to conduct basic, large-scale, and leaping research, Liu noted, emphasizing that the core reason why tech investment is converted into corporate profits lies not in improved productivity, but in firms gaining the monopolistic advantage of intellectual property rights.

Editor: Martin Kadiev