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Introduction In 2001, the Chinese government announced the “National Nanotechnology Development Strategy” (2001–10), an ambitious plan involving massive public investment to create scientific and technology capabilities in nanotechnology, the same year that the US started its “National Nanotechnology Initiative.” However, China's enthusiastic embrace of nanotechnology in the early 2000s was neither rooted in solid forecasts of when the technology could be widely commercialized, nor backed by confidence in the capacity of indigenous Chinese industries to reap the fruits of scientific capabilities accumulated in the country. The objective was to catch-up with other advanced countries such as the US, Europe, and Japan through massive public investment. Furthermore, the massive funding from the Chinese government to nanotechnology was declared even as the state grappled with other challenges to promote inclusive development in a country where the GDP per capita was merely USD 949 in 2000 (at 2000 prices). Therefore, the Chinese government was taking a real bet, to plunge in headlong, to catch up in nanotechnology through public investment to build scientific capabilities. Now, after a decade, what has such a bet on public research yielded? What lessons can be learnt from the outcomes on catch-up strategies in knowledge intensive, emerging sectors such as nanotechnology? These are the questions that the present chapter aims to answer. © Cambridge University Press 2014.