China ranks 11th, having moved up gently but without pause in the past decade! The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), on September 29, released its Global Innovation Index (GII) 2022, underlining that China has been consolidating its position as a global innovation powerhouse and contributing tremendously in supporting global R & D investment.
"This year's GII finds that innovation is at a crossroads as we emerge from the pandemic," WIPO Director General Daren Tang says. What China has achieved exhibits the effects generated by a country that treats innovation as a growth engine and gives tremendous attention to it. China has been building its innovation ecosystem in a very comprehensive way, which is an important factor ensuring its success. "Our country has been steadily moving up the ranking for 10 consecutive years, leaving behind a trial of 23 rungs in the ladder, which reflects the significant advancement of our comprehensive strength in IP and innovation capacity in sci-tech and proves that our efforts in executing renewed development concepts, implementing innovation-driven growth strategies and heightening IP protection have paid off," CNIPA (China National Intellectual Property Administration) Deputy Commissioner Hu Wenhui announces at the IP in the Decade press conference.
Continuing production of quality results
Quality is a key word for this year's GII. "While innovation investments surged in 2020 and 2021, the outlook for 2022 is clouded not just by global uncertainties but continued underperformance in innovation-driven productivity. This is why we need to pay more attention to not just investing in innovation, but how it translates into economic and social impact. Quality and value will become as critical to success as quantity and scale," Tang summarizes.
Accordingly, the GII has two top-level sub-indexes, innovation input rank and innovation output rank, which are further split into seven pillars such as institutions, knowledge and technology outputs. Under them, there are 81 indicators. China is the top performer in nine such indicators including domestic market scale and patents by origin; ranks among the best in domestic industry diversification and state of cluster development and depth, particularly being home to two of the top five sci-tech clusters as shown in the latter indicator with Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Guangzhou and Beijing taking second and third place; performs well in global brand value, intellectual property receipts out of total trade and other IP-related indicators.
"This indicates that innovation is commensurate with development in China. Innovation is accelerating to become a robust engine in driving quality growth," Hu says, from 2012 to 2021, R & D investment of the entire country surged from 1.03 to 2.79 trillion yuan. Invention patents owned by per 10,000 population (not including Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan) skyrocketed from 3.2 to 19.1. Social satisfaction over IP protection rose from 60.39 to 80.61 reading points. China has walked an IP development path with its own characteristics in the past decade.
"China's planning in innovation has paid dividends in its continuing uptick in the GII ranking and outstanding performance in creative outputs and other indicators," Yi Jiming, Director of International IP Research Center of Peking University comments. Internet plus, artificial intelligence and other cutting-edge technologies are budding, opening up space for numerous creative ideas. Sticking with R & D investment and policy encouragement, China can continue translate its innovation inputs into more innovation outputs with higher quality.
Faster integration into global innovation waves
According to the GII, digital age innovation waves and deep science innovation waves are the two greatest waves in global innovation-driven growth. As one of the most active countries in digitalization, China has been a quick up and comer in taking up the shares of digital technology patents and one of the perennial leaders in digital economy scale. Out of the 35 WIPO-defined technology fields, as of July 2022, the top three fields of valid Chinese invention patents are computer technology (284,000, 9.3%),measurement (235,000, 7.7%), digital telecommunications (210,000, 6.9%). In the eyes of Yu Xiang, Director of China-Europe IP Research Institute, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, in the digital economy era, China shall inspire development of artificial intelligence, biotech and other key technology fields while establishing and refining innovation-related legislations and policies on ethics and fairness, advocating healthy development of technological innovation, which can enable technological innovation to become truly positive productivity benefiting the whole mankind on a sustainable basis.
Accession to the Hague Agreement and the Marrakesh Treaty; conclusion of an agreement on protection and cooperation of geographical indications (GI) with Europe, which leads to mutual recognition of combined 244 GIs from both sides; 30 partners in PPH (patent prosecution highway) cooperation and many other materialized results all indicate China has become an essential participant in international frontier innovation and a key contributor to solution of global issues. In the future, China will continue cooperation with other countries in sci-tech and innovation in a more open stance to contribute more for balanced, inclusive and sustainable development of the global IP system.
