Blogs // Sławomir Czepielewski

In my last blog I presented some ideas about increase of the position of China in world ranking of GDP. China has taken the second position on this list in 2010 overtaking Japan with USA only ahead.

Taking into account the extrapolations of the growth expectations of GDP in both countries, it is expected that China will be a leader in 2020. This seems to be very realistic due to the change of growth policy in China and achieved results. Chinese government decided to give support to the policy of innovations. In such a case it is not only cheap labour, which is a competitive factor, but as well the strongest  force of the competitors which is innovative economy.

United Nations affiliation World Intellectual Property Organisation presented recently the report ”World Intellectual Property Indicators 2012“ The report proves the dramatic increase of the number of patent filings. For the first time in the history the number of patent filing in the world  is more than two million. Every fourth filing was executed in China amounting to 526 412, at the same the number in USA came up to 503 582, the third Japan reached only 342 610. This means that China took the position of leader in this competition. The position of leader seems to be sustainable in the coming years due to very strong contribution of China to the growth of patent filings. In the years 2009 to 2011 more than 70% of growth was due to China. The most innovative turned out to be telecommunication and green energy sources industries, essential decrease in number of patent filings was observed in pharmaceutical industry.

It seems to be a historical moment, the trend shows the change in geography of innovation centres, moving to Asia, with China on the leading position and Japan with South Korea on the third and the fourth ones. Within the last one hundred years only 4 countries enjoyed the position of the leader in patent filings, it was Germany, Japan, since 2006 USA and now China. Do you think China is to be the leader in 21^st century? Taking into account the indicators of growth and resources, it seems to be the only solution.