China has seen the world's biggest growth in terms of research and development spending over the past year. But it still has a long way to go before its companies lead the world in innovation, a study has found.

Yearly R&D expenditure by the world's 1,000 largest public companies rose 5.8 percent year-on-year, hitting a record high of $638 billion in 2013, said the global management consulting firm Booz & Co on Monday.

But Chinese companies, which were included in Booz's annual Global Innovation 1000 study, saw their R&D spending soar 35.8 percent year-on-year in the same period, the highest growth out of all the regions in the world.