China's putting on weight to become an 800 pound gorilla in nanotechnology

From Forbes' Nanotech Gets Big In China (emphasis added):

...Measured purely in terms of years, nanotech in Japan and the West does not have much of a head start against China, especially considering that China can leverage the basic research already done elsewhere. On the other hand, technology in any highly advanced field evolves at an exponential rate, which can make it hard for emerging players like China to catch up. This may help explain the conventional wisdom, which is that China excels as a manufacturing country and as a market for goods, but not as an innovator.

Presented with this belief, Accelergy's Sprenger responded simply: "We believe conventional wisdom is about to change." If China's emerging nanotech sector hopes to compete on a global scale in the next six years, it will need to invest heavily in research today--and it appears to be doing just that. As I mentioned earlier, when adjusted for exchange rates and purchasing power parity, China's investment in nanotech research runs a close second to the U.S. Much of that largesse is going toward construction of 33 nanotech centers across Asia, but significant portions are also funding centers already in operation like the National Engineering Research Center for Nanotechnology in Shanghai and the National Center for Nanoscience and Technology of China in Beijing...