"It will be a long and winding road to shift from imitating others to independent innovation," he said.

Rail, nuclear tech tighten links

Innovation is the name of the game

"The good news is, however, efforts to be innovative have achieved results and there's a promising future ahead," Tian said.

China's patent applications surpassed the United States for the first time in 2011 with 525,000 recorded.

The government accepted nearly 2.38 million applications and authorized over 1.31 million in 2013. The number of invention patent applications was 825,000, up 26.3 percent year on year.

It is, however, far too early to celebrate such achievements.

The nation's foundation of technological innovation is not solid and the capability for independent innovation is not strong.

"Though China is a big patent country, it is not a strong one," said SIPO chief Shen Changyu.

Compared with developed countries, China has fewer patents featuring originality, and high or core value, Shen said, adding that there are moves to improve quality and structure of patents.

Innovation capability needs to be enhanced, because it still does not control key technology in core areas, he said.