The experiences of representative scientific and technological powers in establishing, completing, and improving the national innovation system can provide reference for China to construct a national innovation system that adapts to the new pattern of "dual circulation" economic development and the needs of national defense modernization during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period. This article, firstly, reviews and comparatively analyzes the understanding and definition of the national innovation system by different scholars at home and abroad. Secondly, taking World War II as the starting point in time, this paper studies the evolution of the French national innovation system. It is found that the construction of the French national innovation system has gone through four phases that may be slightly staggered: from 1939 to 1957, France vigorously developed scientific research; from 1958 to 1989, France accelerated the construction of a system for science and technology planning, evaluation, consultation, and achievement transformation; from 1990 to 2014, France promoted the reform of the national science and technology system; from 2015 to present, France is advancing in multiple ways to defend its status as a world's scientific and technological power. Finally, based on the evolution characteristics and practical experience of the French national innovation system, combined with China’s national conditions and the current status of innovation system construction, four enlightening suggestions are put forward: Explore and implement a classification evaluation mechanism and a differentiated index system; Build a demand-oriented multi-dimensional guarantee mechanism for the transformation of scientific and technological achievements; Optimize and improve the R&D investment and allocation mechanism; Speed up the top-level design of the large-scale development of new scientific research organization models.