BEIJING, April 24 -- China has seen steady progress in exchanges and cooperation in intellectual property (IP) with countries along the routes of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the country's top IP regulator said Monday.

A total of 115 BRI countries filed applications for 253,000 patents over the past decade in China, with an average annual growth rate of 5.6 percent, Shen Changyu, head of the China National Intellectual Property Administration, told a press conference.

The administration has signed cooperation agreements with regulators of 56 BRI countries, and the number of published patent applications by Chinese companies in BRI countries in 2022 reached 12,000, up 16.4 percent year on year, according to Shen.

A series of cooperation projects between China and BRI countries have been undertaken, including legal policy exchanges, postgraduate study, and IPR awareness promotion, Shen added.