China, Japan and South Korea occupy top spots in global index of scientific innovation
- Three Chinese tech clusters made the top five, behind Tokyo-Yokohama, while the top US hub dropped to sixth place
- The World Intellectual Property Organization’s rankings list is based on numbers of researchers, papers published and patents filed
Three Chinese science and technology clusters have made the top five in a global innovation index, behind Japan but ahead of the United States.
This year all of the top five sci-tech clusters are located in East Asia, while China has the highest number of clusters – 24 – in the top 100 in pre-release of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)’s global innovation index. This moves it ahead of the US, which has 21.
The WIPO, a United Nations agency, published the index, which is based on the numbers of inventors and researchers in the clusters, as well as the number of articles published and patents filed.
This year, Seoul moved up a spot to third place, overtaking Beijing, while the Suzhou-Shanghai cluster moved up to fifth place, swapping places with San Jose-San Francisco in California.
The WIPO said Suzhou-Shanghai had moved up primarily due to the increase in filings under the Patent Cooperation Treaty, which offers protection in more than 150 countries.
According to the State Council Information Office, the Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Guangzhou cluster accounted for 8.2 per cent of global PCT applications last year, and 1.9 per cent of scientific paper publications. Beijing held the top global position in scientific paper publications at 3.7 per cent.
