China pledges greater protection for hi-tech intellectual property

‘It is a must for the sake of our future development and competitiveness,’ head of the National Intellectual Property Administration says

Improved IPR protection will be part of country’s five-year plan for 2021-25 and longer strategy through 2035, he says

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China is determined to reduce its dependence on the US for technology. Photo: Shutterstock

Published: 6:03pm, 25 Apr 2021Updated: 6:03pm, 25 Apr 2021

Providing better protection for intellectual property rights in the hi-tech field is a central part of China’s development strategy, a senior official said on Sunday, as Beijing seeks to drive the next stage of its economic evolution and end its reliance on American technologies.

“It is a must for the sake of our future development and competitiveness,” Shen Changyu, head of the China National Intellectual Property Administration, told a press briefing in Beijing.

Blueprints for the improved protections – to be included in China’s five-year plan for 2021-25 and longer strategy through 2035 – had already been drafted and were pending review, he said.

Now the world’s second-largest economy, China for many years relied on copying foreign innovations as it played economic and technological catch-up. But in 2008 it made IPR protection a national strategy and has since made rapid progress.

In 2020, it made 69,000 applications under the Patent Cooperation Treaty – more than any other country in the world – and ranked 14th of 131 economies featured in the World Intellectual Property Organization’s global innovation index, two places above Japan.

Citing data as a new and key factor of production and the burgeoning data economy in China, Shen said the reasonable flow, effective protection and use of data required a sound mechanism, and that regulators were seeking the opinions of the market.