The number of patent applications in China exceeded one million for the first time in 2015 and rose to 1,339,000 in 2016, more than twice as many as 600,000 in the US, and more than 4 fold the 318,000 in Japan; China’s world’s share exceeded 40%. Basic patents are increasing due to the improvement of S&T capabilities in China. The budget of universities was 25 trillion yen, 9 fold Japan’s 9 trillion yen, the number of researchers was 1.48 million people in China, twice the number of 840,000 in Japan. Among the top 10% cited citations, Chinese papers were 19,000, 2.5 times more than Japan’s 7000. The number of university patent applications in China was 137,000 or 12,4 %, 19fold of those of Japan’s 7223 cases or 2,3 %. The top Chinese university in number of patent applications in 2016 was Zhejiang University with 1,730 cases, of Japan Tokyo University with 331 cases. Different to Japan, more than 65 % of all university patents belong to the applicants. Ventures originating from universities were 5279 companies in China, three times that of 1773 companies in Japan.
Yoshimitsu Arai, lecture at JST Chinese IP Study Symposium, September 11, 2017