China's spending on research and development accounted for 2.13 percent of the nation's gross domestic product in 2017, reaching the level of moderately developed countries, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Tuesday.

R&D spending hit 1.76 trillion yuan ($254 billion) with a whopping 12.3 percent growth year-on-year by 2017. And the country saw its annual per capita spending on R&D reach 436,000 yuan in 2017, an increase of 32,000 yuan over previous years.

The structure of R&D spending improved as more money was invested to boost fundamental research, said Zhang Peng, a senior statistician from the NBS.

The spending on fundamental research rose 18.5 percent year-on-year to 97.55 billion yuan last year, 3.6 percent points higher than the rate in 2016. Specifically, the growth rate is at its highest level in the last five years.

Eastern China continues to be the leader domestically, contributing 61.9 percent to the growth of the nation's R&D inputs. The Central China, Western China and Northeastern China regions lag behind, reporting 22.9 percent, 13.1 percent and 2.1 percent, respectively.