Patents and China: what changed?

By the end of 2019, China had dethroned the United States as the largest applicant of patent or obtained via the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) as reported by the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO). This is a far cry from what the People’s Republic of China was about a decade or so age, when they maintained a global reputation of being a nation of counterfeit and pirated goods (from a certain perspective it can be argued that it still is). The question on most individuals’ mind in relation to this recent development is, what changed with China?

Contrary to popular belief, and claims by the Chinese regime to be a “pure” communist state (the exact term they tend to use is Maoist), this country of over a billion citizens is quite capitalistic in nature. This Chinese model of socio-economic governance is unique in its own rights as despite maintaining a moderately high level of free-market policies it is extremely authoritarian with the government maintaining a high level of control over companies operating on Chinese soil (either directly or indirectly), regardless of the country of origin of three organisations.

Initially, when this Asian nation opened up to international trade, it identified a golden opportunity to boost employment number and increase its economic growth exponential by exploiting it’s archaic intellectual property laws and cheap labour to manufacture counterfeit goods. However, with the increase in its economic influence on the world stage and the Chinese regime’s desire to accumulate more soft power, especially in the fields of scientific development and technology the leadership came to the consensus that it would be beneficial to their interests if they utilized the PCT along with their existing counterfeit production operations. It should be noted that the Chinese leadership views this accumulated stockpile of patents as a possible channel through which they can influence the decisions of foreign companies and possibly world governments.