Page 20 - How China Is Winning the Tech Race

Google, eBay, MySpace, and Amazon. Other early related by-products of that
process are Lenovo personal computers, Haier appliances, and Huawei elec-
tronics goods: Chinese brand names that have emerged globally.
Today, a fresh generation of homegrown super-innovators is replacing the
master duplicators. Chinese whiz kids, more often than not funded by
domestic venture capital firms, are coming up with cutting-edge advances for
cell phones, chips, e-commerce, and software at the same time as and often
ahead of the West. Paul Saffo, a Silicon Valley tech forecaster, likens China’s
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progress from copycats to innovators to the Swiss copying American watch-
making methods at the turn of the twentieth century and then developing the
world’s best watches. “The pattern is the same, going after the low-hanging
fruit and then becoming more innovative,” he says. “When I go to China and
visit a high-tech firm, I look around and ask, Which one of these people will
be the next Steve Jobs?”
In 2006, China chalked up the world’s fastest growth rate for new patent
applications, a 56 percent increase to 3,910, 12 ranking it eighth globally,
although it is still far behind the U.S. number of nearly 51,000 patent appli-
cations (see Table 4).

INTERNATIONAL PATENT APPLICATIONS

2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 % Change

United States 41,296 41,029 43,350 46,772 50,089 7.1

China 1,018 1,295 1,706 2,499 3,910 56.5

Source: World Intellectual Property Organization.

PATENTS GRANTED IN CHINA

1985–2002 2003 2004 2005 2006

792,352 149,588 151,328 171,619 223,860

Source: State Intellectual Property Office of the People’s Republic of China.

Table 4 Applications Rise for Patents in China

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