Based on the analysis of Chinese R&D expenditures, R&D activity subjects, and R&D investment structure change trends since 1995, the research evaluates the total R&D investment, R&D investment intensity, gross domestic product, energy consumption per unit of GDP, etc., from 1995 to 2019 and analyzes the relationship among R&D investment and economic scale, industrialization process, and economic operation efficiency, and found that R&D investment has promoted the continuous expansion of Chinese economic scale, accelerated the process of industrialization, and improved economic operation efficiency. Meanwhile, the input gap is an important reason for the unbalanced regional economic development.