SIPA director-general Rui Wenbiao presents a speech to the 2022 Global Innovation Index roundtable. [Photo/WeChat account: Shanghai_IPA]

A roundtable on the 2022 Global Innovation Index or GII – issued by the Geneva-based World Intellectual Property Organization, or WIPO, which tracks the current state of innovation globally and ranks the innovative performance of 132 countries – was held in Beijing on Sept 30.

WIPO assistant director-general Marco Aleman and Li Baodong, secretary-general of the Boao Forum for Asia, delivered the opening remarks. Sacha Wunsch-Vincent, head of WIPO's economics and statistics division and co-editor of the 2022 GII, interpreted the index, while Liu Hua, director of WIPO Office in China, chaired the meeting.

Rui Wenbiao, director-general of the Shanghai Intellectual Property Administration, or SIPA, also participated, giving a speech online from his office.

Rui said that East China's Shanghai continued to prioritize intellectual property, or IP, as a strategic support to promote the city's innovative development.

He added that in recent years – with the strong support of WIPO and guidance from the China National Intellectual Property Administration – Shanghai was continuing to strengthen the creation, protection and application of IP and was striving to create a sound IP ecosystem in line with the innovation and development needs of its businesses.

Rui stressed that Shanghai would accelerate its efforts to become a springboard for international IP protection. He said it would also be a "new hot land" for realizing global knowledge values through stronger reform, stricter protection, more effective applications and more open cooperation in the future.

WIPO has been publishing the GII every year since 2007 and it is said to have become an authoritative benchmark to measure the level of innovation and IP throughout the world. According to the latest GII, China moved up to 11th place on the list and remains the only middle-income economy in the top 30.