China currently holds more than 22.74 million effective trademark registrations, ranking first in the world, with an average of one valid trademark per 5.2 market entities, according to Shen Changyu, the Party committee secretary and director of the State Intellectual Property Office.

Shen made the remarks July 6 at the 11th China Trademark Festival when it kicked off in Northwest China’s Ningxia Hui autonomous region. He noted that in the first half of this year, China received 3.44 million applications for trademark registration and had completed 3.52 million trademark registrations, a 67.8 percent year-on-year increase.

He added that the review period for trademark registration was reduced to less than five and a half months.

As an important member of the Madrid System for the International Registration of Marks, China has been a major destination for foreign enterprises to register trademarks. In the first half of 2019, a total of 367,000 foreign applications for international trademark registration were filed in China, ranking No 2 in the world system. Also, Chinese applicants made 69,000 applications for international trademark registration last year and nearly 3,000 in the first half of this year, maintaining third place in the world after the European Union and the United States.

In recent years, the State Intellectual Property Office has been encouraging and supporting enterprises to build more trademark brands with high profile and recognition, in the hopes of boosting the development of the brand economy.

Efforts have also been made to power targeted poverty alleviation and boost the local economy with trademarks featuring agricultural produce and landscape marks.

With a more favorable development environment, more Chinese brands with high quality are emerging. The latest BrandZ top 100 most valuable brands list increased the number of Chinese brands to 15, indicating recognition improvement among global consumers.

Meanwhile, the protection of trademark brands is constantly being strengthened in China. In April this year, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress revised the trademark law, imposing higher amounts of compensational penalties of up to 5 million yuan on those who maliciously infringe on the exclusive right to use trademarks, a significant increase of the cost to violate the law.

On top of that, the State Intellectual Property Office and relevant departments jointly launched a special campaign to enhance infringement investigation and enforcement of the law, having dealt with 115,000 cases of trademark violations in the first half of this year.