Abstract:Enterprise is a significant main stakeholder for country to carry out innovative activities, therefore it is vital to improve enterprise’s technological innovation ability through increasing the input of R D expenditure. Based on The 2019 EU Industrial R D Investment Scoreboard and survey data, this research analyzes the current situation of Chinese enterprise’s innovation activities from the perspective of intensity and structure of R D expenditure, and conducts the international comparison on this issue with world’s major innovation countries. The results reveal that the scale of Chinese enterprise’s R D expenditure keeps expanding, and enterprise has become country’s main stakeholder on R D expenditure’s investment and implementation. Compared with state-owned enterprise, private enterprise has stronger momentum on R D investment, which plays a dominant role within different types of enterprise. Chinese enterprise has a relatively high growth rate on R D expenditure, however the scale and intensity of R D investment are lower than that of world’s major innovation countries respectively. The allocation of Chinese enterprise’s R D expenditure is also obviously lower than that of world’s major innovation countries, which has already seriously restricted the improvement of enterprises" independent innovation ability. Additionally, Chinese enterprise’s low proportion of basic research is related with different factors including innovation characteristics, enterprise’s mission, development stage, enterprise’s capability, and systematic mechanism etc. Therefore, in the new era, more and more enterprises should be guided and motivated jump towards the direction of "Edison quadrant" and "Pasteur quadrant".