Is the Dragon Learning to Fly? An Analysis of the Chinese Patent Explosion

Abstract

This paper analyses characteristics of the recent explosion of patent filings by Chinese firms both domestically and in the United States. We construct a firm-level dataset by matching USPTO and SIPO patents to Chinese manufacturing census data for 1999-2006. Using this integrated dataset we show that the patent explosion is accounted for by a tiny, highly select group of Chinese companies in the ICT equipment industry. Our analysis further suggests that firms patenting in both the US and China are younger, larger and more export-oriented than firms patenting exclusively in China.