From the New York Times, a reports on China’s ambitions to become an innovation economy:
…Can China become a prodigious inventor? The answer, in truth, will play out over decades — and go a long way toward determining not only China’s future, but also the shape of the global economy.
Clues to the Chinese approach emerge from a recent government document containing goals for drastically increasing the nation’s production of patents. It offers a telling glimpse of how China intends to engineer a more innovative society.
The document, published in November by the State Intellectual Property Office of China, is called the “National Patent Development Strategy (2011-2020).” It discusses broad economic objectives as well as specific targets to be attained by 2015.
In a recent interview, David J. Kappos, director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office, pointed to the Chinese targets for 2015 and called them “mind-blowing numbers.”
