China-Germany cooperation mutually beneficial in nature: spokeswoman

China and Germany are comprehensive strategic partners whose cooperation is mutually beneficial in nature, a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said on Wednesday.

Mao Ning, the spokeswoman, made the statement at a press conference in Beijing when asked to comment on reports that Germany is mapping out vulnerabilities in China's supply chain to identify fields where it can gain leverage and make trade with China more balanced.

"In the era of economic globalization, there's nothing unusual that countries need each other in the industrial chain. China and Germany are comprehensive strategic partners. Our cooperation is mutually beneficial in nature. The two sides need to enhance communication and cooperation to achieve common development, and jointly keep the global industrial and supply chains stable and unimpeded to promote world development and prosperity," Mao said.

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.