An article by CNIPA Commissioner Shen Changyu published in the 2026 Issue 6 of Qiushi puts a hard number on one of China’s longest-running innovation problems: more than 1.349 million existing patents held by universities and research institutions had not been effectively commercialized before a nationwide stocktaking and value assessment was carried out across more than 2,700 institutions. The article also sets that backlog against two powerful indicators of economic relevance. Patent-related technology contract turnover reached RMB 1.18 trillion in 2025, while the value added of China’s patent-intensive industries reached RMB 18.04 trillion in 2024, accounting for 13.38% of GDP.
The real significance of those figures is not simply that China has “many patents,” but that the next phase of IP policy is being forced to confront a more difficult question: which patents can actually move into products, supply chains, licensing programs and industrial investment. Shen identifies five recurring obstacles—patents that cannot be commercialized, are not worth commercializing, are too risky to commercialize, lack capable intermediaries, or face weak market conditions. Read together, they point to a structural diagnosis: the problem is no longer just output, but conversion.
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