T are an inventive bunch. They came up with the printing press, the car and the X-ray machine, not to mention MP3s and gummy bears. The country remains a big contributor to technological progress, filing more than 16,700 international patent applications in 2024. But, according to a new global ranking of 139 economies published by the World Intellectual Property Office (), Germany is no longer among the ten most innovative countries in the world. China has displaced it.
uses 78 indicators to assemble its Global Innovation Index. They cover inputs (such as spending on research and development) and outputs (such as patents and high-tech exports). The index also tries to capture the strength of a country's institutions, the sophistication of its markets and its progress in adopting technology, not just inventing it. Most of the data was collected in 2024, before President Donald Trump started his assault on science in America.
China, of course, has a vast population and a far bigger economy than Germany has ($18.9trn compared with Germany's $4.7trn). It can train more engineers, spend more on research and maintain more universities. It would be no surprise if it outranked Germany in a league table based on absolute measures. But the explanation for China's success is not so simple. Many of 's indicators control for the size of a country's economy and population. Spending on research and development, for example, is expressed not in raw dollar terms but as a percentage of . The number of researchers is calculated per million members of the population. The top-ranked country this year, as it was last year, is tiny Switzerland. Sweden comes second and America third.
China's entry into the top ten is all the more remarkable given its status as a middle-income economy. Countries with a similar per person would be expected to rank in the 50s or 60s (see chart 1). Other countries that have outperformed their income levels include India, South Korea, Vietnam and Britain. China also seems to be getting a satisfying amount of bang for its innovation buck. Its scores for outputs (patents, trademarks, exports and the like) are better than expected given its level of inputs (education, research spending and so on). This defies the conventional view that Chinese innovation is force-fed, reliant on huge amounts of money and manpower. The country was once described as a "fat tech dragon" that ingested vast amounts of resources while producing meagre creative sparks. The dragon now seems to be in better shape.
In its report notes a tentative recovery from the global innovation lull it identified last year. The number of patent filings and scientific publications across the world is growing again. Venture-capital investment also rose by 7.7% in 2024. But much of this spending was concentrated in America and funnelled to one sector: artificial intelligence. Although the value of deals is growing, the number fell for the third year in a row. Venture-capital investment, which had been spreading across more countries and industries, seems to be narrowing again, the report notes. That is a pity. The technological frontier is broad. There are many avenues of inquiry to explore. Human ingenuity can manifest itself in many ways, from movable type to chewable treats. ■