China’s Race for Patents to Build an Innovation Economy - NYTimes.com

Unlikely to be like Japan in the 1980s, for reasons explained in the article

So can China become a prodigious inventor? The answer, in truth, will play out over decades — and go a long way toward determining not only China’s future, but also the shape of the global economy.

Clues to the Chinese approach emerge from a recent government document containing goals for drastically increasing the nation’s production of patents. It offers a telling glimpse of how China intends to engineer a more innovative society.

China’s Race for Patents to Build an Innovation Economy - NYTimes.com