China's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) and the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) on December 30 jointly release some data to indicate the growth of China’s patent-intensive industries in 2020.

Grouped together, the full collection of patent-intensive industries accounted for 11.97% of China’s gross domestic product (GDP) in 2020, registering an 0.35% increase over the previous year. The newly added value of all these patent-intensive industries in 2020 was 12.128.9 billion yuan ($1.9 billion), registering an increase of 5.8% over the previous year and 3.1% higher than the growth rate of GDP in the same period.

The next-generation machine manufacturing industry topped the sector of patent-intensive industries by generating 3,419.4 billion yuan, accounting for 28.2% of the total added value. The second largest contributor was the information and communications technology service industry generating 2641.5 billion yuan, which accounted for 21.8% of the total added value. It moved one place up from where it was in 2019. The third largest industry was the information and communications technology manufacturing industry generating 2417.7 billion yuan, which accounted for 19.9% of the total added value. As the industry of the smallest scale in this sector, the environmental protection industry generated 274.8 billion yuan, accounting for 2.3% of the total added value.

In terms of growth rate, the information and communication technology service industry grew by 15.7%, the fastest growth rate of the sector. Driven by factors such as strong domestic and international demand for anti-pandemic products and corporate production materials, the pharmaceutical and medical industry recorded an accelerated growth rate of 10.1%, with an increase of 4.7% over the previous year.

The full text is available here.