Abstract:In recent years, government financial input such as the National Public Research Fund projects has played an important role in promoting basic research in China. By matching the NSFC funded data with the published data of the journal papers of Engineering Division I, this paper studies the impact of project funding on the quality of basic science research, and discusses the mechanism and heterogeneity effect from the perspective of team cooperation and innovation. It is found that project funding can improve the quality of basic scientific research, and this effect is characterized by "inverted U"; The project funding helps to expand the scale of scientific research team cooperation, promote cross institutional cooperation and innovation, promote in-depth cooperation within disciplines and more large-scale cross disciplinary cooperation, and thus improve the quality of basic research.