It has been leaving all other countries in the dust, including the US, Japan, and South Korea. But the real question is why it isn’t a global leader in more sectors and industries. 

The conventional economic wisdom is that patents are beneficial to society given their impact on progress and innovation. As a result, they have long been used as a basic gauge of national economic competitiveness.

But as a Brookings Institution paper indicates, pundits have lamented the slowdown in patent trends since at least the 1970s. A 2002 Economist article (paywall) additionally infers about that period that they appeared to be on the wane throughout the industrialized world, except – of course - in Japan.

Chinese Leadership

A chart published on Tuesday by Our World in Data shows something similar maybe afoot in the era of generative AI and big tech.

China filed about 1.4 million patent applications in 2021, massively outpacing all the other countries in the world.

Distant Followers

All the traditional tech and industrial heavyweights, from the US, Japan, South Korea, and India were distant also-rans, each filing far less than 400,000 patents annually.

Given that, the short-term view then might have been that we had just needed to sit around for a few years and wait until the likes of a Shenzhen-based DJI (drones) or a BYD (electric vehicles) took the world over and left their hollowed-out, capitalist brethren with crumbs.

No Mainland AI Here

But we are at least a good medium-term out from 2021 and instead, the world has been upturned by the likes of OpenAI and ChatGTP.

There are no major Generative AI players in western economies that hail from the mainland, unless you count TikTok, a social media industry leader, as being among them.

Just One Aspect

This might all be an indicator that patents, per se, are only part of the whole equation. Or, as an article in «Forbes» claims, the whole system is simply broken. Our World in Data, however, is somewhat more circumspect, saying that patents are «just one» aspect of innovation.

«A country’s innovation system is shaped by a complex network of research, development, and commercialization, and patent applications are just one part of this broader process,» they indicate.

Same Old Places

If that is true, then that probably goes some way towards explaining why the biggest, brand-spanking pieces of new tech are still being made in largely the same old places. 

More importantly, it might also be an indirect indicator as to why China, and Japan before it, didn't end up with more market-leading industries, in more sectors, than they do now.