On September 20, Beijing time, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) issued the 2021Global Innovation Index Report (hereinafter referred to as Report), which shows that China ranks 12^th, up 2 places from 2020. The Report spoke highly of China’s progress in the innovation, and emphasized the importance of government decision-making and incentive measures for innovation promotion.

China, since 2013, has been steadily rising in the ranking of the Global Innovation Index for 9 consecutive years, with a strong upward momentum.

In the aspect of sub-item index, from the perspective of innovation input, China’s trade, competition and market scale, knowledge-based workers and other two categories of indicators are in a leading role in the world. In the aspect of segmenting index, PISA scale scores of reading, mathematics and science, domestic market scale, proportion of companies providing formal training, domestic industry diversification, average expenditure of the top 3 global R&D companies, average score of the top 3 QS universities, industrial cluster development, proportion of total capital formation in GDP, proportion of corporate funding GERD were all top-ranked ones.

The segmenting index including China's domestic patent and trademark applications, and the proportion of creative product exports in total trade have achieved the leading role in the world. In 2021, the broad index of knowledge communication has made remarkable progress, particularly the subdivision of the proportion of intellectual property revenue in total trade has made continuous progress, which indicates that China is gradually transforming from a major power of intellectual property introduction to a great power of intellectual property invention.

The Report shows that Switzerland has been ranked first for the 11th consecutive year, Sweden, the United States, the United Kingdom, and South Korea ranked second to fifth; China ranked 12th, ranking first among the middle-income economies, surpassing advanced economies such as Japan, Israel, and Canada.

Since the "Global Innovation Index Report" was issued in 2007, it has become a wind vane for measuring innovation and the cornerstone for governments to make economic decisions. More and more governments are conducting systematic analysis of their annual selection results and formulating countermeasures to improve its performance.

From CNIPA

September 21st, 2021