China's ranking of global innovation index has risen 3 places

While many innovative achievements are emerging in the basic frontier and strategic high-tech fields, China is also steadily improving its ranking of world innovation indicators. Global Innovation Index 2019 (GII) released recently by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) shows that China has maintained an upward trend for the fourth consecutive year, ranking 14th, surpassing Japan, France and other countries, three times higher than last year, and is the only middle-income economy. Once entering the top 30 countries, "a stable place in the leading innovative countries".

GII is the 12th Edition released this year. As a global benchmark, it can help policymakers better understand how to stimulate and measure innovation activities. In 2019, GII ranked 129 economies based on 80 indicators.

"GII shows us that the ranking of countries that prioritize innovation in national policies has increased significantly. The rise of economic powers such as China and India in GII rankings has changed the pattern of innovation, reflecting that policy actions can promote innovation. Francis Garrett, Director-General of the World Intellectual Property Organization, said. Gao Rui said that China regards innovation as its economic development strategy. The rising ranking of global innovation index is the result of years of efforts, and China's innovation system is maturing. In the past 40 years of reform and opening up, China has also made great efforts to build a world-class intellectual property protection system, and made considerable progress. Xiao Zhang Chunxiao, a researcher at the National Institute of Administration, told First Finance and Economics that in the process of industrial restructuring and economic transformation and upgrading in China, scientific and technological innovation is of vital importance. "From R& D (R&D) investment, we can see that the R&D expenditure in China's economy is also steadily increasing year by year, and the R&D investment is also steadily increasing. The absolute value increases gradually.

There are 18 science and technology clusters in China entering the top 100

Looking from the global map, China's GII ranking has increased rapidly in recent years, ranking 14th this year. For the seventh consecutive year, China ranked first in innovation quality in middle-income economies, and ranked first in many indicators related to intellectual property rights and trade, such as patents, the number of industrial designs and trademark applications, as well as creative products and high-tech exports.

You Minjian, an arbitrator and mediator of the World Intellectual Property Organization Arbitration and Mediation Center, told First Financial Journalist that China has maintained the upward trend of the index for many years, sufficiently demonstrating that China has become an increasingly innovative gathering place in the world. This is also due to the active policy application of the Chinese government in recent years to strengthen the protection of innovation and improve the quality of patents.

He believes that in many areas, China has a huge number of users, complex and diverse application scenarios and environments. Combining with the wisdom of Chinese scientists and technicians, China will bring more technological innovation to the world and contribute to the world's technological progress. As an important index in the evaluation of global innovation index, the quality of innovation in China has been further improved. High-income countries such as the United States and Germany are still in the lead. In 2019, China's "quality of innovation" rose from 17th place in 2018 to 15th place in 2019. It is the only middle and high-income economy that is close to the high-income economy in all three indicators.

In terms of full-caliber R& D investment, the 2017 data released by the report show that China has invested more than $166 billion in Japan and $119 billion in Germany, ranking second only to the United States. As an important source of regional economic development, innovation capability is also the development engine of major urban agglomerations in the world today. From the number of innovation clusters, there are 26 innovation clusters in the United States. China ranks second, with 18 clusters entering the top 100 science and technology clusters, two more than in 2018. Compared with last year, almost all clusters in China ranked higher.

It also shows the step-by-step linkage of regional innovation in China. The National Bureau of Statistics recently published a new chapter on the innovation guide spectrum of science and technology development across a wide span, which shows that the National High-tech Industrial Development Zone is the main position of regional innovation and development. The number of high-tech zones has grown from 27 in 1990 to 168 in 2018, and the number of enterprises in the zones has increased from 1600 to 117,000. It has achieved mutual complementarity and interconnection with national innovation cities and independent innovation demonstration zones. In addition, the construction of two national science and technology creation centers in Shanghai and Beijing has been further promoted. The three comprehensive national science centers in Beijing Huairou, Shanghai Zhangjiang and Anhui Hefei have their own characteristics. However, the report also shows that there is room for improvement in the sub-index of innovation investment. Zhang Chunxiao believes that although China's innovation index has made remarkable progress, there is still a gap with developed countries such as the United States and Germany. We should continue to increase investment in various aspects to improve the operation system of science and technology, and strengthen the integration with the real economy to achieve the follow-up of elements. Behind the new innovation index of China's policy of stimulating innovation vitality is the frequent emergence of many policies in improving innovation ecology and stimulating innovation vitality of scientific researchers.

Several Opinions of the State Council on Enhancing Basic Scientific Research in an All-round Way was published at the beginning of last year; A Notice on Measures for Optimizing Scientific Research Management and Improving Scientific Research Performance was issued in July last year; and the National Science and Technology Award Congress in January 2018 also raised a prize of 5 million yuan for the highest national science and technology award. With the increase of scientific research achievements, there are also the improvement of various scientific and technological indicators.