Larger than I realized:
Now, per capita, it’s actually South Korea, Japan, USA, China and I wouldn’t say that doesn’t matter: it’s why Japan and South Korea stay prosperous (though life in South Korea, I gather, is rather nasty for workers.) Still, the bulk matters more: who’s in the lead.
The common rebuttal is that Chinese patents are low quality. So, let’s say that half of Chinese patents suck. They’d still be slightly in the lead.
It’s also interesting that Japan gets almost as many patents as the US. You don’t hear about Japan much these days (unlike the 80s when everyone was terrified) but they haven’t lost their game.
This chart echoes what I’ve been saying for years: the tech lead moves to where the manufacturing floor is. And that’s in China. Happened when it moved to the US from Britain and the US is not immune to the rule.
TechxManufacturing=Power in the modern world. If the US wants to change this, they have to re-shore industry, not just make half-hearted “friend-shoring” moves.
It’s also interesting how bad Europe does here. Germany+France+Britain=5%, which is half of South Korea. Europe is living off its legacy, and that means its decline is damn near certain if they don’t reverse this. Given the US is now poaching European industry, and Europe is letting it out of fear of Russia, well, the future doesn’t look bright.
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