The Chinese government has poured 30 billion yuan (4.7 billion U.S. dollars) into medical research since 2011, according to the country's health authorities.
"China has been giving greater support to research and development in the medical field," said Qin Huaijin, an official in charge of science and education with the National Health and Family Planning Commission, at a press conference on Thursday.
The country has been making an increasing number of medical research achievements at international level.
Qin noted that Chinese scientists had more than 230,000 medical papers published in the world-leading journals of the Science Citation Index between the start of 2010 and the end of 2014. This was more than all but one other country, and China has topped the world in terms of the number of health-related patent applications since 2011.
A China-developed HIV test, revealed in 2011 and adopted nationwide since, has shortened the window period, the minimum time from infection to detection, to 11 days from the previous 22 days, according to Qin.
