China’s National Intellectual Property Administration reported on January 22 that it had issued 530,000 patents in 2020, 17.1% more than the year before, and this despite the pandemic.
This surge results from the fact that “the Chinese government has been prioritizing the central role of scientific innovation in national development,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian pointed out in Monday’s press briefing. “China has entered a new development stage [and] is putting in practice the new development philosophy and formulating a new development paradigm.” That required China strengthening its international property rights (IPRs) policies, which allowed China to shift from being a major importer of innovations made by others, to being a major creator of innovations itself.
