Government is always the major funding source for basic research, no matter whether it is in the US, China, and zny European country.
During the budget surplus era, the US NIH enjoyed the doubled amount of research funding. It issued many big research projects such as human genome project, etiology of cancer, and neuroscience. The biology is advanced immensely from these types of research.
This big science model is appealing because it can potentially achieve big success. It becomes fashionable in other countries. Unfortunately, things not always turn out the way people have expected.