10 bright spots in China's economy 2016

Photo taken on June 20, 2016 shows Sunway TaihuLight, a new Chinese supercomputer, in Wuxi, East China's Jiangsu province. Performing 93 quadrillion calculations per second, Sunway TaihuLight dethroned China's Tianhe-2 from the top in a list of the 500 most powerful supercomputers in the world.[Photo/Xinhua]

China achieved solid progress in innovation-driven development last year. Some tech sectors including supercomputing and quantum communication have become international leaders.

The country received almost 3.5 million patent applications in 2016, up 24 percent on the year before. Among them, patent applications for inventions increased by 21.5 percent to 1.34 million. The number of Chinese international patent applications filed under the World Intellectual Property Organization's Patent Cooperation Treaty hit 40,000 last year.