China's exports of intellectual property royalties reached 45.5 billion yuan (about 6.72 billion U.S. dollars) in the first five months of 2026, the country's top intellectual property regulator disclosed on Wednesday.
The IP royalty exports reflect growing global demand for China's homegrown technologies and innovations.
Rui Wenbiao, deputy head of the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA), said at a press conference providing an update on the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030) that rising patent application figures reflect the new competitive strength of Chinese companies.
"In the first half of this year, the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) international patent applications, the international applications through the design patents in the Hague System and international trademarks under the Madrid System filed by Chinese applicants ranked among the top in the world. The overall scale continued to rise steadily. In the first five months, the export volume of intellectual property royalties in China reached 45.5 billion yuan, a significant year-on-year increase of 64.9 percent, indicating that Chinese enterprises actively used intellectual property to create new advantages in international competition and promoted the high-quality and innovation of China's service trade," said Rui.
China's exports of IP royalties reach 45.5 bln yuan in Jan-May
China has accumulated more than 1.7 million valid invention patents in strategic emerging industries by the end of June this year, said the spokesman for the China National Intellectual Property Administration on Wednesday.
Spokesman Rui Wenbiao, also the deputy director of the administration, said at a press conference in Beijing that China will continue to improve its intellectual property rights protection system for industry.
The intellectual property protection system in emerging fields is constantly innovating. We have released the Guidelines for Patent Applications Related to Artificial Intelligence and revised the Patent Examination Guidelines, adding a chapter on 'AI and Big Data'. By the end of June, China, excluding Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan, had 1.746 million valid invention patents in strategic emerging industries, an increase of 4.3 percent from the end of last year. The 65 approved intellectual property operation centers include 48 ones involved in emerging and future industries such as integrated circuits, biomedicine, aerospace, and 6G, accounting for more than 70 percent of the total," said Rui.
"Next, we will focus on the development and practices of different industries in emerging fields, provide better authorization and rights confirmation models for their development, and define clearer rights ownership, protection scope and protection forms to promote the high-quality development of emerging and future industries," he said.
China's invention patents exceed 1.7 mln in strategic emerging industries
