While China has filed more generative AI patents than any other country—over 38,000 between 2014 and 2023—experts caution that this volume may not equate to technological dominance.
For starters, a significant portion of its patents are filed only within China, with just 7.3% submitted internationally.
According to Visual Capitalist, the quality of these patents is also under scrutiny, based on the patent grant ratio which is the ratio of patents granted against the number of applications.
China’s general patent grant ratio is 55% as of 2023, which trails that of other major economies like Japan (70%) and Canada (77%). Numbers released by the Ministry of Industry and Information of China in April 2024 suggest that the grant ratio of China’s AI patents is even lower, at 32%.
China is far ahead of other countries in generative AI inventions like chatbots, filing six times more patents than its closest rival the United States, U.N. data showed, Reuters published in July 2024.
Visualizing U.S. vs. Chinese AI Model Performance 🥊
— Visual Capitalist (@VisualCap) April 27, 2025
This visualization is part of AI Week—sponsored by @TerzoHQ—and compares the performance of the top U.S. and Chinese AI models on LMSYS’s Chatbot Arena.https://t.co/3xsKDudy3g#AIWeek pic.twitter.com/PvgD6MQCUI
“This is a booming area this is an area that is growing at increasing speed. And it’s somewhere that we expect to grow even more,” Christopher Harrison, WIPO Patent Analytics Manager, told reporters.
More than 38,000 GenAI inventions were filed by China between 2014-2023 versus 6,276 filed by the United States over the same period, WIPO said.
Harrison said the Chinese patent applications covered a broad area of sectors from autonomous driving to publishing to document management.
These data showed that South Korea, Japan and India were ranked third, fourth and fifth respectively, with India growing at the fastest rate.
Anyway, US is leading the direction of global AI dev!?
While falling behind China in terms of patents, the U.S. is undoubtedly leading the direction of global AI development.
In 2024, U.S. organizations produced 40 “notable AI models” compared to China’s 15. The AI Index Report defines notable AI models as those that make meaningful technological advancements.
According to WIPO’s Patent Landscape Report, American patents and publications also receive significantly more global citations, highlighting their outsized impact.
For example, OpenAI has published just 48 articles (ranked 325th), but its publications have received 11,816 citations (ranked 13th).
Source: @/DOTCOM | Visual Capitalist