Based on a long-term tracking questionnaire survey of 499 innovation-oriented enterprises (IOEs) in China, the characteristics of the expenditure structure of enterprise technology innovation project fund in IOEs are analyzed. It is all known that the research on the characteristics and rules of technology innovation at the project level of enterprises is critically important and distinctly difficult because the enterprises questionnaire need to open some even systematic information of their innovative activities which they never disclosed to the public. National IOEs are chosen as the survey object, rather than by random sampling to select enterprise investigation, because these national IOEs technology innovation ability is not only outstanding, but also has a good industry distribution, type distribution and size distribution, as well as higher efficiency of the enterprise innovation management, and it′s more important of their greater willingness to accept the questionnaire survey so that they could collect and send back a clear, accurate and effective information feedback of their innovation project. 

An object method was used in order to gain micro-data of expenditure of enterprise technology innovation project. In terms of content design of the questionnaire, expending items of enterprise technology innovation projects are divided into five categories, which are R&D expenditure, technology-introduced expenditure, pilot plant test expenditure, new product market research and test marketing expenditure, and personnel training expenditure. Among them, the R&D expenditure is further divided into basic research expense, applied research expense and experimental development expense. 

The results of the survey show that the median value of an investment amount of single enterprise technology innovation projects is relatively concentrated at less than RMB 30 million, while the average value of it is larger than median value. This is a very important data, which could reflect the basic structure and most advantage of national IOEs on technology innovation input. It is worth noting that these data comes from the best part of national IOEs, which is in fact the cost data of the most successful technology innovation project in the past three years of national IOEs, so that it can not represent the technology innovation situation of all enterprises while it could be valuable to hint the future development trend of enterprises technology innovation in China. 

The results of the survey also show that R&D expenditure is the main expending item, pilot plant test expenditure accounts for relatively low, technology-introduced import expenditure is an important cost, the ratio of above-mentioned three items is 1:0.5:0.4, as well as distinctions of expenditure structure of different technology-starting points of projects or different industry of projects. This result is obviously different from the empirical conclusion of some experts that the pilot test cost is significantly higher than the R&D expenditure, its ratio is nearly 10:1. After several discussions, we believe that the ratio does reflect the typical characteristics of technology innovation on the project level of national IOEs in the current stage of economic development, which is the characteristic of micro technology innovation behavior that is often ignored.

After further investigation of IOEs basic research activities, we know that the R&D funds are divided into three categories: basic research, applied research and experimental development. In terms of the number of enterprises, only 11 out of 208 surveyed IOEs have basic research activities, accounting for only 5%. The ratio of enterprises carrying out basic research, applied research and experimental development is 1:10:8. It is worth emphasizing that a breakdown analysis of R&D expenditure in technology innovation projects of IOEs shows that a few leading IOEs carrying out basic research have emerged in China′s innovative enterprises, which is a very important phenomenon. The survey results also show that the starting point for research, development phase of technological innovation projects is the most, accounting for 60.1% of all survey items; then, technological innovation projects starting from the production stage, accounting for 27.4%. Finally, the technological innovation projects starting from engineering and trial production, accounting for 12.5%. This result reveals an important feature that most of the technical innovation project of IOEs is no longer on improving of existing technology to match the market, but for some innovating demand that has not yet had a supply of technology, to organize to carry out R&D activities, for meet the needs of new technology, namely the IOEs technology innovation projects have more originated in the atypical supply market demand. 

In addition, the questionnaire has classified the IOEs by industry, and found that these IOEs were relatively concentrated in 13 industries. In order to distinguish the industrial characteristics of technology innovation projects, this survey introduces the classification method of industrial technology intensity, and then divides 13 industries into high-technology intensity industrial group, medium-technology intensity industrial group and low-technology intensity industrial group. So some industrial traits are revealed that distribution of three technology intensity industrial group is more balanced including 4, 5 and 4 industries, respectively.Moreover, the proportion of R&D expenditure in the three technology intensity industrial group is characterized by "high-high-low" distribution characteristic, etc. 

Then, there are three main conclusions drawn from this study. First, a few IOEs in China have entered into a new stage of innovation development requiring carrying out basic research activities, and openness is the typical characteristic of their current basic research activities. Second, IOEs have begun to initiatively organize large-scale industrial technological innovation cooperation in the market, highlighting the main position of technological innovation of firms in a national innovation system in China. Third, the technology innovation of IOEs is still remaining at a stage of paying attention to technology acquisition while making light of technology application development, which is regarded as its significant feature of technology innovation that is "building a new tower on the foundation of others". At the same time, it also puts forward some policy enlightenments such as supporting the basic research of IOEs and strengthening the expenditure of pilot plant scale in firms.