We study the evolution of patenting in China from 1985-2019. We use a Large Language Model to measure patent importance based on patent abstracts and classify patent ownership using a comprehensive business registry. We highlight four insights. First, average patent importance declined from...

The objective of this paper is to investigate the innovative performance of China’s NIS in international comparison and the capacity of China’s NIS in creating indigenous innovation. We provide insights drawing upon patent data and using patent families to determine the value of the...

China recently surpassed the USA as the greatest global source of patent applications. However, without internationally comparable measures of patent quality it remains questionable whether China's patent expansion constitutes the rise of a new technological superpower. Our novel quality index...

"The forthcoming fourteenth Five-Year Plan (2021-2025) emphasizes innovation as the driving force to double China's GDP and income per capita until the year 2035, implying five percent annual output growth. China's innovative and economic performance, however, is less outstanding than often...

Considering China's policy-driven patent expansion, we validate domestic citations in comparison to foreign ones, which are exogenous to China's policy, as economic indicators. We derive internationally comparable citation data from international search reports. Whereas foreign citations show...

This paper analyses the influence of in-house R&D and external knowledge acquisition on the total factor productivity (TFP) of listed Chinese firms for the time period 2001-2010. We find a quantitatively important positive effect of in-house R&D. The achieved level of technological...

The objective of this paper is to investigate the innovative performance of China's NIS in international comparison and the capacity of China's NIS in creating indigenous innovation. We provide insights drawing upon patent data and using patent families to determine the value of the underlying...