China’s pace of technology development is now 6x faster than the US, as measured across 40M patent filings, contrasted back to 1920 in this short, 7-page note. The implications are frightening. Analysing the US vs China technology development raises questions over the Western world’s long-term competitiveness, especially in manufacturing; and the consequences of decarbonization policies that hurt competitiveness.
Our conclusions are presented in this short note from tabulating 40M patents in the US and China back to 1920.
China first filed more patents than the US in 2007, and filed 6x more in 2019. Our charts compare the US vs China technology development across multiple industrial categories, presenting implications for trade and energy policy.
The long-term history of patent filings is also compared globally, for the US, for China and for Japan. In some countries, the pace of patent filings has been 90% correlated with GDP growth.