The bar chart illustrates the gross domestic expenditure on research and development in five different nations from 2001 to 2011.
Overall, it is noticeable that the percentage of expenditure showed a upward trend in China and Spain throughout the period, except in France, UK. USA, which had some fluctuations. Notably, both China and Spain accounted for the smallest share at the beginning of the period, whereas the USA recorded the highest percentage in the final year.
To begin with, both China and Spain increased throughout the period. However, China stood at just above 0.8% in 2001, and afterwards, it experienced a slight rise to 1.3% in 2005 before rising substantially to 1.8% in 2011. Spain followed a similar trajectory, albeit at a less steep rate than China. It showed nearly the same percentage as China at the beginning of the period, after which it increased slightly to 1.1% in 2005 before continuing to grow to 1.3% in 2011.
Conversely, France, the UK and the USA had some fluctuations over the period. The percentage of spending in France stood at around 2.1% in 2001, compared with the UK at around 1.5% and the USA, which recorded the highest figure in the first year, which stood at 2.6%. However, France decreased slightly to 1.9% in 2005 and recovered to 2.2% in 2011, whilst the UK followed a similar pattern, declining marginally to 1.4% and recovered to 1.6%. A similar but more pronounced change occurred in the USA, which dropped minimally to 2.4% in 2005 and recovered to 2.8% in 2011.
