The picture shows a robot named "Gabot" picking up products for customers at the Zhongguancun International Innovation Center in Beijing. Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Ju Huanzong

People's Daily, Beijing, March 31 (Reporter Zhao Yongxin) The "National Innovation Index Report 2024" (hereinafter referred to as the "Report") released by the China Academy of Science and Technology Development Strategy on the afternoon of the 31st shows that the global innovation pattern maintains a three-legged state in Asia, America and Europe, and has outstanding advantages in leading the country in scientific and technological innovation; China ranks tenth in comprehensive innovation capabilities, continuously increasing investment in innovation resources, outstanding intellectual output, continuous improvement of enterprises' innovation capabilities, and gradually improving the innovation environment, which strongly supports and leads the country's high-quality development.

The report shows that in 2024, China's national innovation index ranked tenth in the world in comprehensively, up 10 places from the 20th in 2012. It is the fastest-progressing country in the past decade and the only middle-income country to enter the top ten in the world. Judging from the specific score, China's national innovation index score was 70.1 points, surpassing France, and the gap between the 5th and 9 countries ranked 5th and 9th in Japan, the United Kingdom, Germany and other countries is between 2.4 and 6.8 points, and the growth rate of the main indicators is higher than that of developed countries. Overall, China's innovation capabilities are close to European countries with per capita GDP of around US$50,000 and are still rising steadily.

From the 5 sub-index of the National Innovation Index, China has performed well in all dimensions -

"Innovation Resources" rank fifth. In 2022, China's R&D investment accounted for about 20.1% of the world, ranking second in the world; basic research funds accounted for 6.57% of the total R&D expenditure in the whole society, ranking 34th; the number of high cited scientists ranked second in the world.

"Knowledge creation" ranks seventh. China's share of highly cited papers has increased, ranking first in the world; China's number of valid invention patents has reached 3.351 million, ranking first in the world; it ranks eighth in the number of invention patents per 10,000 employed people; it ranks first in the number of industrial design registration applications for US$10,000 industrial value added.

"Enterprise Innovation" ranks ninth. The proportion of China's tripartite patents in the world increased to 10.4%, ranking third in the world; the ratio of corporate R&D funds to industrial added value and the proportion of corporate researchers in the whole society ranked 18th and 16th respectively; the revenue of intellectual property fees ranks 20th in the proportion of service industry export trade.

In addition, "innovation performance" and "innovation environment" ranked 22nd and 20th respectively.

It is understood that the National Innovation Index Report builds an evaluation index system from five dimensions: innovation resources, knowledge creation, enterprise innovation, innovation performance and innovation environment, and uses authoritative international organizations and national official statistical survey data.