In 2013, Chairman Xi Jinping proposed the "Silk Road Economic Belt" and the "21st Century Maritime Silk Road", collectively known as the “Belt and Road Initiative”. This year is 10th anniversary of the Belt and Road Initiative. From October 17 to 18, 2023, the third "Belt and Road" International Cooperation Summit Forum was held in Beijing, with the theme of "High-quality joint construction of the 'Belt and Road' and joint efforts to achieve common development and prosperity." China's economic and trade exchanges as well as cooperation on patent matters with the Belt and Road participating countries (hereinafter “Belt and Road” or “Blet and Road countries”) have strengthened in the past decade.

Recently, the China Patent Office released “Patent Statistical Report between China and ‘Belt and Road’ Countries (2013-2022). Here we excerpt and explain some key contents as well as numbers in the Report.

The Report shows, from 2013 to 2022, the number of patent applications and granted patents filed by the Belt and Road countries in China has been on the rise overall. Among them, the average annual growth rate of Chinese applications filed by the Belt and Road countries is 5.4%; the average annual growth rate of Chinese patents owned by the Belt and Road countries is 9.8%. Figure 1 below shows the trend of the number of applications and patents in China filed by the Belt and Road countries.

The Report also says that in the past decade, the Belt and Road countries have filed a total of more than 253,000 patent applications in China, including 199,000+ invention patent applications, 40,000+ design patent applications, and 14,000+ utility model patent applications. The total number of granted patents (including invention patents, utility model patents and design patents) is approximately 112,000.

During the past 10 years, a total of 115 Belt and Road countries, the Report shows, have applied for patents in China. Among them, the top five countries in terms of application volume are, in order, South Korea, Italy, Singapore, Austria, and Luxembourg. The following Figure 2 illustrates the numbers and proportions of Chinese patent applications from the top five and other Belt and Road countries.

In 2022, there were in total 3,982 companies/individuals from the Belt and Road that submitted patent applications in China, an increase of 654 from 2013. 20 applicants from the Belt and Road with the largest number of patent applications in China have applied for a total of over 99,000 patents, accounting for 38.9% of the total applications from the Belt and Road. The volume of applications and ranking of the top 20 Belt and Road applicants are shown in the table below: