China’s Intensifying Talent Offensive and the Reordering of the Global Technology Landscape

China’s Patent Output Approaches Half of Global Total, Triple the U.S.
Upgraded Thousand Talents Program Accelerates Global Talent Acquisition
Massive State Subsidies Drive Quantitative and Qualitative Expansion

China is accelerating its push to secure global technological dominance, filing more patents than any other nation. As strategic rivalry with the United States deepens, Beijing is moving to secure market advantage by locking down core technological ideas at the earliest stage. China has dramatically strengthened its research capabilities through university innovation programs ranging from the 211 Project to the current Double First-Class initiative, while investing heavily in talent-recruitment schemes such as the Thousand Talents and Ten Thousand Talents programs. This aggressive expansion has reshaped China’s scientific and technological landscape and is now altering the global balance of technological power.

Record Patent Filings Last Year, Surging from 34.6% in 2014

According to a World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) report released on the 14th, China filed 1.8 million patent applications in 2024, representing 49.1% of all global filings. This figure is approximately triple that of the United States, which submitted around 600,000 applications. China’s patent filings last year rose 9%—an increase of approximately 153,000—and its global share jumped from 34.6% in 2014 to 49.1% in 2024.

Notably, 93.1% of patent applications submitted to China’s National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) came from domestic residents—the highest share among the top 20 countries. By contrast, of the 603,194 applications received by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), more than half—about 333,000—were filed by non-residents. Total U.S.-origin filings, including domestic and overseas submissions, reached 501,831, marking a 3.7% decline.

Over the past decade, Asia’s share of global patent filings has exceeded 70%, driven largely by China, South Korea, and India. By sector, computer technology accounted for the largest share globally, followed by electrical machinery, measurement, digital communications, and medical technology. China also ranked first worldwide in trademark and design applications. Chinese applicants filed approximately 7.3 million trademarks—nine times the number registered by the United States—and 825,330 design applications, representing more than half of the global total.

Patent filings are widely regarded as both a quantitative indicator of technological innovation and a symbol of industrial clout—signaling an intent to claim commercial ground even before technologies reach market readiness. China also surpassed the U.S. in granted patents, issuing more than 1 million compared with roughly 320,000 in the United States. China’s granted patents increased by 124,000 year-on-year, while the U.S. registered a modest rise of just 4,570. In artificial intelligence patents in particular, China holds a dominant position: according to the China National Data Administration, the country accounts for 60% of all AI-related patents worldwide.

The Talent Reservoir Cultivated by the Chinese State

These trends reflect China’s long-standing talent-development agenda. Beijing began earnest efforts to cultivate advanced scientific talent in the 1980s, launching recruitment programs centered around the Chinese Academy of Sciences to address talent gaps and draw young researchers into national development projects. But despite a rapid influx of early-career scientists, the shortage of mid-career scholars limited the country’s overall research capacity.

To address this, China introduced the Hundred Talents Program in 1994, providing concentrated research funding to selected scholars. In 1998, Beijing launched the Changjiang Scholars Program to encourage overseas PhD-trained academics to return.

This was followed in 2008 by the Thousand Talents Program, widely regarded as a catalyst for China’s ascent in advanced technologies. The program aimed to recruit 1,000 high-caliber scientists and engineers between 2009 and 2018, categorizing candidates into “innovative talents” and “entrepreneurial talents.” Requirements included being under age 55, holding a PhD from a top overseas university, and spending more than six months per year working in China. Recruited scholars received subsidies of approximately $150,000 per person, along with extensive research funding and visa privileges. In exchange, they shared their research outcomes with the Chinese government.

The program succeeded in attracting prominent Chinese scholars abroad. Among them was Zhang Tong, a Stanford-trained expert with 60 AI-related patents who previously worked at Tencent. Another notable figure is Pan Jianwei, a leading quantum computing researcher and academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, named one of Nature’s “People of the Year” in 2017. Thousands of scientists—including renowned neuroscientist Mu-ming Poo, formerly of the University of California, Berkeley—returned under the initiative. A 2019 U.S. Senate report estimated that China recruited around 7,000 high-tech researchers through the Thousand Talents Program alone.

A New Wave of Threats to Global Big Tech

However, amid mounting international scrutiny—particularly U.S. accusations that the Thousand Talents Program facilitated industrial espionage—China formally ended the scheme in 2012, the first year of President Xi Jinping’s tenure. Beijing shifted to the domestically focused Ten Thousand Talents Program, aimed at cultivating 10,000 high-level researchers within China. This initiative helped fuel China’s rapid breakthroughs in AI, robotics, electric vehicles, drones, and other frontier industries.

More recently, China has launched the Qiming Program, targeted at recruiting elite overseas scientists—including those in sensitive or classified fields such as semiconductors. Supervised by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the program began accepting applications in July from young researchers, innovative scholars, and overseas postdoctoral scientists. Successful candidates receive a $140,000 national grant and an additional $280,000 in provincial matching funds. Including local incentives, salary supplements, and housing subsidies, top-tier overseas recruits can receive as much as $812,000 in total support.

China is also investing aggressively in domestic talent development. The central government is channeling large-scale funding into more than 40 universities—including Peking University and Tsinghua University—with the goal of elevating them to world-leading status after 2030. This “Double First-Class Project” is a more advanced version of the earlier 211 Project launched under Deng Xiaoping.

The results are already visible. According to Nature, Chinese universities accounted for eight of the top 10 global institutions in scientific output last year (Harvard ranked first). Zhejiang University—alma mater of Liang Wenfeng, founder of China’s AI firm DeepSeek—ranked sixth (compared with Seoul National University at 54th and KAIST at 76th). Liang and a small group of young, China-trained researchers built DeepSeek’s breakthrough AI inference model, once believed achievable only with astronomical investment. DeepSeek’s rise signals not only that China has completed its domestic AI talent pipeline but also that the long-derided “Chinese Dream” may be unfolding exactly as Beijing envisioned.