On September 1st, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) released the 2025 Global Innovation Index (GII) ranking of the world's top 100 innovation clusters. Hangzhou climbed one position from last year to rank 13th globally, achieving a historic high!
The ranking identifies the concentration of world-class innovation activities locally through three core indicators: international patent applications filed under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), scientific publication output, and venture capital transaction volume, which was newly added this year.
The report shows that Hangzhou's PCT applications totaled 11,128, accounting for 0.85% of the global total, while scientific publication output reached 81,181.1, representing 0.99% of the global total. Notably, the newly added "venture capital transaction volume" indicator emphasizes both intellectual property output and deployment, while highlighting the transformation and value realization of innovation achievements. Specifically for Hangzhou, this indicator stood at 2,804, accounting for 1.19% of the global total.
Hangzhou's "advancement" in global innovation influence, rising from 85th place in 2017 to 13th place in 2025, cannot be separated from Hangzhou's "deep cultivation" in intellectual property. By the end of 2024, the city had 128,000 valid invention patents; 478 specialized and sophisticated "little giant" enterprises, ranking first in the province and fifth nationally; and patent-intensive industry value-added of 646.05 billion yuan, accounting for 30.8% of GDP, which is over 17 percentage points higher than the national average.
Meanwhile, Hangzhou has built a solid protective barrier for its innovation ecosystem, promulgating and implementing local regulations such as the "Hangzhou Intellectual Property Protection and Promotion Regulations" and the "Hangzhou Conflict and Dispute Prevention and Diversified Resolution Regulations." The city has organized intellectual property protection special campaigns like "Thunder" and "Sword Net," and upgraded the Intellectual Property International Commercial Mediation Cloud Platform, providing intellectual property legal protection for building an innovative and vibrant city.
From the concentrated emergence of phenomenal tech enterprises like the "Hangzhou Six Dragons" to achieving historic highs in global innovation rankings, this innovative and vibrant city continues to advance and reach higher levels. What has Hangzhou done right?
In recent years, Hangzhou has used the "134X" science and technology innovation work system as its framework, focusing on building a globally influential innovation source, a preferred destination for national technology transfer and transformation, and an important base for developing new quality productive forces. The city has steadily promoted deep integration of technological innovation and industrial innovation, integrated reform and development of education, science and technology, and talent, accelerated the construction of an artificial intelligence innovation highland, and worked to build a higher-level innovative and vibrant city.
Going forward, Hangzhou will consistently regard scientific and technological innovation as the city's genetic makeup and core driving force. Taking the opportunity to build a national pilot city for optimizing the business environment in the intellectual property field, the city will continue to use intellectual property as the "golden key" to unlock new scenarios for high-quality economic development, promote efficient flow of intellectual property elements in domestic and international dual circulation, accelerate the formation of a virtuous cycle of "innovation chain - industrial chain - value chain," and make every effort to build a higher-level innovative and vibrant city.