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By the end of December, China had received a total of 1.34 million invention patent applications in 2016, a year-on-year increase of 21.5 percent, said Hu Wenhui, spokesperson for China's State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO), at a press conference in Beijing on Jan. 19. In fact, China has received the most appplications each year of any country in the world for six consecutive years, China News Service reported.

Statistics show that SIPO granted 404,000 invention patents in 2016, of which 302,000 were for domestic inventions, up 14.5 percent. Huawei took the lead in the number of invention patent applications, while State Grid ranked first in the number of invention patents granted.

China's domestic invention patents exceeded 1 million by the end of 2016, making it the third country in the world to claim this achievement. The first two countries are the U.S. and Japan, noted Gong Yalin, director of planning at SIPO. The number of domestic invention patents is widely recognized as an important index to evaluate a country's innovation level.

SIPO also received 45,000 international patent applications under the Patent Cooperation Treaty in 2016, an increase of 47.3 percent. China has applied for 4,843 patents in 18 countries along the Belt and Road route, and has received 3,697 international patent applications from countries along the route.

Hu pointed out that in certain technical fields, there is a gap between the number of domestic invention patents and international invention patents granted in China. Compared to developed countries, China still lags behind in overseas patents.