«China 2025» strategy re-examined

China 2025

Where does China stand in strategic technologies?

“China 2025” strategy

In 2015 China launched an ambitious plan to become a technology superpower by 2049. The “China 2025” strategy defines core industries, such as robotics, pharma, electric vehicles, aerospace, and advanced digitisation, in which China wants to become globally competitive and largely independent of foreign technology.
By 2025 the strategic goal was to significantly increase innovation capacity. At the World Economic Forum 2025 we presented our new analysis on where China currently stands in these strategic technologies from a high-quality patent perspective.

China’s technological milestones surpassed

It is clear that China’s goal to “significantly increase its innovation capacity” is a massive understatement. China is already the world leader in five of these technologies (railways, advanced digitalisation, ships, robotics, green energy) and second in four others (new materials, power equipment, aerospace, electric vehicles). They lag behind in agriculture and pharmaceuticals. In artificial intelligence, arguably the most important digital technology, China has a world share of 47%.

Chinese world share in high-quality patents (world-class patents) in selected technologies, 2010-2025

Background information and download

Wir haben den strategischen Technologiefeldern die folgenden Einzeltechnologien zugeordnet:

Aerospace
Aircraft, Aerospace, Helicopter, Vtol, Cosmonautics, Satellite Tech

Agriculture
AgTech, Agricultural Machines, Dredgers, Sower, Planter

Digital
Big Data, Cloud Technology, Neural Networks, Deep Learning

Vehicles
Electric Vehicles (not hybrids)

Green Energy
Organic, flexible PhotoVoltaic, Tandem & Perovskite PV, Silicon Photovoltaics, Wind Energy

New Materials
Advanced Materials

Pharma / Medtech
Red Biotech, Biopharma, Medtech

Power Equipment
Gas & Steam Turbines, Nuclear Power Plants, Reactors & Fuels, Nuclear Fusion Reactors

Railways
Railroad & Tramway

Robotics
Industrial Robots, Humanoid Robots

Ships
Ships, Maritim Waterways & Offshore, Maritime & Hydro Power

The number of high-quality patents held by a company in each technology is measured. To determine the quality of individual patents, country coverage and citation frequency are determined. Country coverage calculates the worldwide legal coverage of patent protection. It shows how companies evaluate the importance of their own invention. The larger the number of countries in which the patent is filed, the more expensive the patent protection. A broader international country coverage thus signals that the patent applicant considers his patent to be promising (self-assessment). EconSight attaches particular importance to a realistic country classification, because although a patent can be filed in many countries, only a few countries are strategically relevant. It is therefore measured whether a patent has reached “critical mass” (several large countries such as the USA, China, Japan, Europe, but also central medium-sized countries such as the UK, Germany, South Korea). Whether a patent is additionally active in many small countries is irrelevant for the basic quality.

The citation frequency of the patent results from how often the examiners of the different patent offices refer to it and cite it. The patent offices use quite similar methods to check whether a patent application is new and inventive, and use other published patents for this purpose. This shows how important an invention is compared to other patents in the same technology (third-party assessment). Here, too, EconSight attaches particular importance to the relevance of the measured values. While other evaluation systems simply count citations or at best weight more recent citations higher than older citations, EconSight focuses on business-relevant citations. For example, the citation of a patent by an individual inventor is worth less than the citation by a large company such as Alphabet.

Individual patent strength as a combination of relevant country coverage (achieving a “critical mass”) and relevant citation frequency (“business relevant” citations) suggests what impact a patent family has on competition and allows a quantifiable classification into important patents and less important patents. EconSight focuses its analysis on the so-called world-class patents: the top 10 percent of all patents within a defined technology, measured by individual patent strength.