China Moves Up One Place to 11th Rank in Global Innovation Index 2022
The 15th edition of the Global Innovation Index (GII) was released on 29 September 2022. The theme of this year’s GII was "What is the future of innovation-driven growth?" According to the report, research and development (R&D) and other investments that drive worldwide innovative activity continued to boom in 2021 amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, while challenges are emerging as related to whether innovation investments would be translated effectively into economic and social impacts under the stress of global uncertainties and lasting underperformance in innovation-driven productivity.
In terms of overall ranking, Switzerland remained the world leader in innovation for the 12th consecutive year. The full list of the top 15 innovative economies was: 1. Switzerland; 2. The US; 3. Sweden; 4. The UK; 5. The Netherlands; 6. Korea; 7. Singapore; 8. Germany; 9. Finland; 10. Denmark; 11. China; 12. France; 13. Japan; 14. Hong Kong; and 15 Canada.
This year, China, in the 11th spot overall, was up one place from 2021, sustaining its steady upward trajectory in the GII since 2013. By income group, it came top among the 36 upper-middle-income economies. China's other outstanding performances included, in terms of innovation input sub-indicators, its first position in domestic market scale, number of firms offering formal training, and PISA scales in reading, maths and science; and in innovation output sub-indicators, being a global leader in the filing volume of patents, utility models, trademarks, and industrial designs, in labor productivity growth, and in creative goods exports.
In addition, China was home to two of the world's largest five science and technology clusters, in which Tokyo-Yokohama (Japan) was the number one, followed by Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Guangzhou (China), Beijing (China), Seoul (Korea), and San Jose-San Francisco (the US). Moreover, China's overall number of science and technology clusters reached 21, equal to the cluster number in the US for the first time.
The GII, grouped into innovation input sub-index and innovation output sub-index, ranks annually the innovation performance of 132 economies with highlights of their innovation strengths and weaknesses, using 81 indicators classified into seven pillars of criteria, namely, institutions, human capital and research, infrastructure, market sophistication, business sophistication, knowledge and technology outputs, and creative outputs.
