However, along with the ability to churn out products of all kinds at probably the most competitive prices in the world comes a shady reputation: that the people profiting from this manufacturing muscle are not shy about copying existing products, and selling them at a lower price. In short, critics will snipe that China is happier copying rather than inventing.

 

Now, according to China’s State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) comprehensive patent data analysed by Singapore Management University’s Assistant Professor Kenneth G. Huang, patent filing within China, having gotten off a slow start back in 1986, has surged over the past decade, implying that there is a growing emphasis on innovation and emphasis on intellectual property rights. Huang’s findings were also recently published in the journal, Science.

 

Between 1986 – when SIPO was formed – and 2006, the cut-off date of the data gathered by Huang when his research began more than two years ago, the number of patents granted grew by an average of 13% per year in this two-decade period, where more than two million applications were filed, and some 1.1 million granted.

 

“Patents play a central role in empirical research on innovation, despite their limitations as measures of the introductions of new products, processes, and services. They identify the inventors, assignees (patent holders), location, date and innovative characteristics of every filed invention over long periods of time,” said Huang, whose research interests include strategic management of technology innovation, intellectual property, science policy and technology strategy.

 

Huang’s analysis has thrown up several other interesting data points in this survey of China’s innovation landscape. For critics who still prefer the view that China is happier copying than inventing, Huang points out that the United States, as recent as 50 to 100 years ago, was also an economy largely in the same mould.

 

“First you imitate, next you gain some indigenous capability, then you start doing some innovation yourself,” said Huang in an interview. Furthermore, the success rate of patent applications in China is around 55% or more, in line with the 50% success rate awarded by the United States Patent Office (USPTO) in recent years, which removes suggestions that the spike in patents assigned is due to lower standards in an effort to catch up.

 

Just to be sure: national patent offices, like SIPO and USPTO, do not merely award patents to their own citizens and companies. Foreign businesses can also file and be awarded patents. The same goes for universities, hospitals, and other research institutes or organisations.

 

Based on the SIPO data collated by Huang, the number of patents awarded to Chinese entities constituted 58% of the total patents in the 12 major science and technology classes: medical sciences; micro-structural technology; nanotechnology; organic chemistry; organic macromolecular compounds; biochemistry, microbiology and genetics; optics; computing; information storage; electric elements and semiconductor; electronics, and last but not least, electric communication. The number of patents awarded to them grew by an average of 33% a year between 1986 and 2006; outpacing the 13% overall growth for patents granted across all classes and ownership sectors. In contrast, in the same period, USPTO awarded 55% of the patents filed to American entities, with an annual growth rate of 7%. These figures suggest that innovation and invention is gathering more momentum in one place than the other.