A patent boom is certainly a meaningful indicator of innovative capacity, but it does not necessarily equate to technological supremacy. China’s patents is not commensurate with the importance of its patents as a large part of these patents aren’t even renewed (it’s also in the WIPO report).

The issue with scientific publication is similar issue. Even the Chinese state-controlled media like the South China Morning Post has published article on AI-powered fraud and Chinese paper mills are mass-producing fake academic research. The FT wrote, China’s fake science industry: how ‘paper mills’ threaten progress,

… China’s impressive output [of scientific research] masks systemic inefficiencies and an underbelly of low-quality and fraudulent research. Academics complain about the crushing pressure to publish to gain prized positions at research universities.

“To survive in Chinese academia, we have many KPIs [key performance indicators] to hit. So when we publish, we focus on quantity over quality,” says a physics lecturer from a prominent Beijing university. “When prospective employers look at our CVs, it is much easier for them to judge the quantity of our output over the quality of the research,” he adds …

The headline numbers alone are meaningless. If we look closer, we’ll see a different picture.