Huawei Photo: Deng Zijun/GT

Chinese technology giant Huawei invested 131.7 billion yuan ($19.3 billion) in research and development (R&D) in 2019, accounting for 13.9 percent of its business revenue in the year. The figure represents 6 percent of the total R&D expenditure nationwide, surpassing the individual amounts of 25 provinces in China, according to China's National Bureau of Statistics.

According to the bureau, the total R&D expenditure in China last year was 2.21 trillion yuan, up 12.5 percent year-on-year, which accounted for 2.23 percent of the total GDP of the year, 0.09 percentage point higher than that of 2018.

If Huawei was treated as a provincial administrative region, its R&D expenditure would rank seventh nationwide, just behind provinces and cities including Guangdong, Jiangsu, Shandong, Beijing, Zhejiang, and Shanghai, surpassing the individual expenditure of 25 other provinces.

As China is pursuing high-quality economic development, many companies have been allocating a bigger percentage of their revenue to innovation, including Huawei, which is being pursued and attacked by the US government to thwart the company's technology advances in the world. 

Years ago, Huawei set a goal to support its worldwide development - to spend no less than 10 percent of its revenue each year on R&D. According to incomplete statistics, the company has invested at least 639.3 billion yuan in R&D in the past 15 years. In 2018, the company's R&D expenditure exceeded 100 billion yuan for the first time.

As a result, the company has enjoyed a rapid revenue growth in recent years, with its annual revenue growth often exceeding 20 percent year-on-year, despite the US government assault, according to Huawei's annual financial reports.

According to the China National Intellectual Property Administration, in the first half year of 2020, Huawei had been granted 2,772 patents in China, making it the Number 1 patent holder in Chinese mainland.

According to Harrity, a US-based patent service company, Huawei in 2019 filed 2,938 patent applications, ranking seventh in the world. And as of 2019, the company had more than 85,000 registered patents worldwide.