On March 29th, 2019, the Balance of International Payments was published by China’s State Administration of Foreign Exchange. Statistics show that China’s patent import amounted to  236 billion Yuan(35.8 billion USD), with a year-on-year increase of 24.74%, being the fastest during the past decade. In addition, China’s  patent export  reached 36.8 billion Yuan(5.6 billion USD), with an increase of 16.67% compared with that of  last year. The trade deficit was 30.2 billion USD, with a year-on-year growth of 26%.

 The cost of IP exports and imports have been listed in the  Balance of International Payments since 1997 and until now,, the cost of IP imports has increased by 22% annually..Currently, China has become the 4th largest patent importer in the world. According to the statistics from the IMF, in the first three quarters of 2018, China ranked the 3rd in terms of  patent import cost with an amount of 27.7 billion USD while the US ranked 2nd with 40.2 billion USD.

Based on previous statistics from the World Bank, the US is the largest IP exporter to China. From 2013 to 2015,  China’s IP import from the US accounted for 25.61%, 27.74% and 24.55% of the total volume. If the trend goes on, the cost might reach $9 billion in 2018.

It 's worth noting that the patent cost paid by China’s mobile phone manufacturers to the Qualcomm accounted for a relatively large part of the total amount. According to the 2018 financial report of Qualcomm, the revenue paid by China reached $15.149 billion, accounting for  66.64% of the overall income while the revenue on patent licensing took up 22.71%.  As a result, China’s enterprises may have paid around $3.44 billion to  Qualcomm as patent fees.

Currently, the US ranked first in terms of patent income.In 2018, the IP exports of the US reached 130.451 billion USD, imports $53.751 billion, and  trade surplus $76.7 billion.

According to the analysis by China’s State Administration of Foreign Trade, China  ranked the 11th in the world in cost on patent exports. Guangdong Province contributed the majority of patent export.

According to  the statistics in the first half of 2018, the patent exports of Guangdong Province reached $2.28 billion which accounted for 83.4% of the total volume.

April 1, 2019

Source: laoyaoba.com

photo from: 6199pic.com