According to State Intellectual Property Office's (SIPO) press conference, in the first half of the year, PCT applications received by SIPO climbed to the 20,000 plateau, logging at 21,600 and up 16% year on year. Six provinces (cities), namely Guangdong, Beijing, Jiangsu, Shanghai, Shandong, Zhejiang accounted for nearly 90% of all applications, with Guangdong dwarfing all others at 11,900.
In the first half of 2017, China received 565,000 patent applications for invention, up 6.1% and granted 209,000, 160,000 of which were granted to domestic filers and 149,000 of that 160,000 were service inventions, accounting for 93.1%.?As of June 2017, China was in possession of 1,227,000 invention patents (not counting those originated from Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan). Every 10,000 Chinese owned 8.9 invention patents with Beijing (85.9), Shanghai (38.4), Jiangsu (20.5), Zhejiang (18.1), Guangdong (17.5), Tianjin (16.5), Shaanxi (8.1), Fujian (7.1), Liaoning (7.0), and Anhui (7.0) taking over the top 10 spots.
Also in the same time span, Chinese nationals filed 2,174 patent applications (already published) in countries along the Belt and Road (exclusive of China), up 17.8% while those countries rendered 2,038 patent filings in China, up 23.2%.

Source: SIPO