BEIJING, May 5 -- China's intellectual property trade expanded last year, demonstrating the country's steadily improving international competitiveness in the area, official data showed.

From 2013 to 2023, the average annual growth rate of China's total trade in intellectual property royalties stood at 9.4 percent, according to data from the State Administration of Foreign Exchange.

Last year, the total trade volume of intellectual property royalties reached 53.7 billion U.S. dollars. Among the total, exports stood at 11 billion dollars, an increase of nearly 70 percent compared with 2019, the data showed.

In 2023, China's intellectual property trade accounted for about 6.1 percent of the total scale of services trade, an increase of 0.6 percentage points over that of 2019, according to the data.

More than 70 Chinese companies earning intellectual property royalties in 2023 had an annual cross-border income of more than 10 million dollars, the data showed.