China is relatively low in terms of patent per capita, only rank world number 9, this is one area for improvement. The other area is low concentration i.e.
need for fewer but larger corporations. The WIPO report has a special section on this.
The Top 100 Global Patent Applicants
Table 1 lists the top 100 applicants based on their total number of patent families between 2003 and 2012. Mainly multinational companies, however 4 Chinese universities are in the list.
55 companies out of top 100 are from Japan.
Panasonic of Japan was the top applicant in the 2000s, with 111,653 patent families worldwide. It was followed by Samsung Electronics of the Republic of Korea (95,852), and by the Japanese companies Canon (74,193), Toyota (73,220) and Toshiba (65,151).
LG Electronics of the Republic of Korea and International Business Machines (IBM) of the US are two other non-Japanese applicants that rank among the top 10. Together, the top 10 applicants accounted for a third of all families held by the top 100 in the 2000s
The number of patent families belonging to the top 100 applicants grew sharply between 1994 and 2005. Since peaking at 231,000 in 2005. However, their combined share has declined over the decades, while those held by applicants from China, the Republic of Korea and the US have increased.
China needs to increase patent concentration (industrial concentration) i.e.
build mega-size corporations. It's expected that other than organic growth, increasing M&A (merger & aquisition) activities will also serve the purpose.