According to the recently unveiled WIPO’s Global Innovation Index (GII) 2024, China has topped the world for a second consecutive year in the number of top 500 science and technology (S&T) clusters worldwide. Qingdao has obtained the 20th place in the highly competitive list, ranking 8th in China.

The GII Report, which was launched by the WIPO in 2017, is a well recognized ranking list to evaluate the performance of more than 130 economies across the world in terms of innovation capacity. Qingdao was included among the world’s top 100 science and technology clusters for the first time in 2019 and ranked 80th globally. With its ranking jumping to 20th place, Qingdao is among the fastest-growing clusters in the world.

As indicated in the report, Qingdao had filed 8,442 applications from 2019 to 2023, and published 47,000 SCIE papers from 2018 to 2022.

    Over recent years, Qingdao has increasingly come under the spotlight in China’s and even the global sector of scientific and technological innovation. Qingdao has come out in front in such lists as “Innovation Capability of National Innovation-oriented Cities” published by the China’s Ministry of Science and Technology and “Influence of National Cities in Scientific and Technological Innovation” released by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. (Geng Tingting)

 A shipbuilding and maritime engineering industry base in Haixi Bay, Qingdao.