As Lao Tzu said， "A huge tree grows from a tiny seedling; a nine-storied tower rises from a heap of earth." Basic research is the fundamental approach to fostering innovation-driven development， and its level becomes an important yardstick for measuring the overall scientific and national strength of a country. Since the beginning of the 21st century， China's overall strength in basic research has been consistently increasing. With respect to input and output， China's input in basic research increased by 14.8 times from 5.22 billion yuan in 2001 to 82.29 billion yuan in 2016， with an average annual increase of 20.2%. In the same period， the number of China's scientific papers included in the Science Citation Index (SCI） increased from lower than 40，000 to 324，000; China rose from the 6th to the 2nd place in global ranking in terms of the number of published papers. In regard to the quality of output， in 2016， China ranked No. 2 in the world in terms of citations in 9 disciplines， among which the materials science ranked No. 1; as of October 2017， China ranked No. 3 in the world in the numbers of both Highly Cited Papers (top 1%） and Hot Papers (top 0.1%）， with the latter accounting for 25.1% of the global total. In talent cultivation， in 2006， China had 175 scientists (136 of whom from the Chinese mainland） included in Thomson Reuters' list of Highly Cited Researchers， ranking 4th globally and lst in Asia.