Employees work at a workshop of an automobile enterprise in Guiyang, southwest China's Guizhou Province, Dec. 11, 2024. [Photo/Xinhua]

The added value of China's patent-intensive industries was 16.87 trillion yuan (about 2.35 trillion U.S. dollars) in 2023, contributing 13.04 percent of the country's GDP, an increase of 0.44 percentage points from the previous year, the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) said on Tuesday.

In 2023, China became the first country in the world to have more than 4 million valid invention patents. Last year, that number reached 4.756 million, and China's numbers of international patent, trademark and design applications ranked among the highest in the world.

The CNIPA also highlighted that China's number of valid invention patents in strategic emerging industries climbed to 1.349 million last year, up 15.7 percent year on year.