Patent can power China's high-tech future

The focus of the draft outline of the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30) is on strengthening the protection and application of intellectual property rights, which provide clear guidance for the development of the intellectual property system.

For a long time, intellectual property was a bottleneck in China's scientific and technological development. When the country's innovation system was still in a catch-up phase, constraints such as reliance on external technologies, weak patent portfolios and limited influence over institutional rules converged, making intellectual property both a vulnerability in international competition and a constraint within the domestic innovation ecosystem. Against a backdrop of intensifying global competition, rising technological blockades and higher regulatory barriers, intellectual property has often been used as a strategic tool to curb the technological advancement of latecomers, highlighting its pronounced competitive nature.

However, intellectual property competition has never been merely a one-way instrument of suppression. Instead, it has repeatedly served as a catalyst for disruptive and high-quality innovation through rivalry and confrontation. It is precisely through ongoing frictions over rules, patent disputes and institutional contests that technological pathways are reshaped and innovation capacities strengthened. For China, confronting intellectual property challenges in international competition is itself an important opportunity to restructure the science and technology system and achieve a leap in innovation capability.

After more than four decades of sustained institutional development, China has established a relatively complete intellectual property protection system that aligns with international practices. China's intellectual property governance capacity has undergone a historic transformation in recent years. Protection has been further strengthened, institutional supply optimized and social consensus significantly enhanced.

At a deeper level, intellectual property embodies both technological and institutional attributes. On the one hand, in the form of patents, standards and trade secrets, it reflects the overall level of a country's innovation capacity and serves as an important yardstick for measuring the quality scientific progress. On the other hand, it establishes a crucial institutional framework linking innovators with market players by clearly defining rights boundaries, stabilizing return expectations and reducing transaction costs, enabling innovation outcomes to flow and be allocated efficiently through the market.

The fundamental purpose of creating and improving the intellectual property system is therefore not simply to protect achievements, but to promote broader and more efficient collaborative innovation and result sharing through institutional design. By embedding fairness and justice into institutional arrangements, the system offers innovators stable and predictable rights protection.

Through clear ownership definitions and protection rules, it encourages original breakthroughs domestically while facilitating higher-level openness and cooperation internationally. In this process, intellectual property is not only a defensive moat, but also a connector that safeguards legitimate interests while creating conditions for technology diffusion and industrial upgrading.

Currently, China is accelerating the construction of a market-oriented operational chain covering the entire life cycle of scientific and technological achievements, gradually forming a complete mechanism that spans technology discovery, value assessment and industrial application. This system offsets the inherent uncertainty of innovation with institutional certainty, enhances market confidence through clear rules, and provides support for scientific achievements to move from academic settings to markets. It is essential to seize opportunities presented by key national initiatives and to advance reform through both policy guidance and institutional mechanisms.

On the one hand, it is necessary to break away from traditional State asset supervision approaches that prioritize safety over efficiency and to fully respect the inherent rules of scientific innovation. This includes improving mechanisms for granting rights over research, giving researchers greater authority over disposition and decision-making, as well as establishing fault-tolerant mechanisms to allow institutional space for exploration so that innovators genuinely gain from commercialization.

On the other hand, joint technological research and intellectual property cooperation should serve as key links to further remove bottlenecks in the deep integration of industry, academia, research and application. By building innovation consortia, sharing patent pools and collaboratively developing technical standards, talent cultivation, scientific innovation and market application can be more closely connected, allowing market demand to play a stronger role in guiding technological pathways and optimizing the direction of innovation. In this process, the government should focus on creating a sound environment and optimizing regulations, while the market plays a decisive role in resource allocation, enabling the innovation ecosystem to continue improving.

Overall, intellectual property is no longer merely a supporting system within the science and technology system. In the face of a changing global competitive landscape, only by continuously enhancing the overall effectiveness of intellectual property creation can China provide stronger and more sustainable institutional support for building itself into a science and technology powerhouse.

The author is a deputy to the 14th National People's Congress and president of the Southern University of Science and Technology.

The views don't necessarily represent those of China Daily. 

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