In our growing strategic rivalry with China, we must lean into what makes us exceptional, particularly our legal system that protects IP rights and creations of the mind

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In the growing geopolitical faceoff between China and the United States, we possess a potent and pivotal advantage over the long run:  private property rights.  

In our market-based system, individuals generally possess the natural right to enjoy and profit from the fruits of their labor, whereas in China individuals remain subservient to the communist state.  

And in our increasingly information-based global economy, intellectual property (IP) rights – patents, copyrights, trademarks and trade secrets – constitute a particularly important advantage for the U.S.  

Since America’s founding, we’ve led the world in cultivating creativity via robust protection of IP.  Our Founding Fathers deliberately protected individuals’ natural right to IP in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, which empowers Congress “to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts” by securing exclusive rights to inventors and authors.  

While much has obviously changed since 1787, our legacy of protecting IP remains constant.  The U.S. continues to rank atop global surveys of IP protection.  

For example, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Global Innovation Policy Center (GIPC) Index once again places America first overall in IP protection and enforcement.  That emphasis on strong IP rights explains why we stand unrivaled in human history in terms of innovation.  From the telephone to television, from our dominance in cinema to music, from pharmaceuticals to the internet, no nation even remotely rivals our record.  America claims more Nobel Prize laureates than any other nation, we account for approximately two-thirds of all new pharmaceuticals introduced to the world and we possess an overwhelming share of the world’s top technology firms. Our brands are recognized across the world, from Coca-Cola to Apple to General Electric.  

Additionally, IP-intensive industries account for over 44 million U.S. jobs and contribute over $7.8 trillion to gross domestic product, which is larger than any other economy in the world except China itself.  Because of strong IP legal protections, those firms invest heavily in critical research and development, which in 2023 totaled over $800 billion in the U.S.  Without our IP protections, that investment would be far too risky.  

Moreover, contrary to any assumption that IP protections somehow disproportionately benefit large corporations, small businesses and startups actually account for over 90% of U.S. patent holders.  

Our legal and constitutional framework creates an innovation ecosystem that treats IP not as some sort of abstraction or afterthought to other forms of private property, but as a form of real, enforceable natural property rights.  

In contrast, China doesn’t protect IP, it steals and confiscates it.  

America’s IP-protective economic and legal model rests upon the philosophy that individual inventors and entrepreneurs deserve the fruits of their brilliance and labor.  China, on the other hand, relies instead upon industrial espionage, forced technology transfer and massive state subsidies dictated by a centralized, totalitarian regime.  

According to the U.S. Trade Representative, China engages in “wide-scale trade secret theft,” economic espionage and other unfair practices that undermine American innovators.  And according to a report from the Commission on Theft of American Intellectual Property, Chinese IP theft costs the U.S. economy up to $600 billion per year through cyber espionage targeting U.S. companies and government agencies, forced technology transfers as a precondition for accessing Chinese markets and subsidized duplication of technology in strategic sectors like semiconductors and electric vehicle (EV) batteries.  

As a consequence, China persistently trails America despite longstanding expectations of reversal. Despite its massive advantage in population and growing economic heft, China doesn’t compare to the U.S. in terms of ongoing innovation or preeminence of its enterprises and brand names.  That’s not due to lack of talent or industrial ambition, but rather because it lacks fundamental respect for the rule of law, market concepts or private property rights, including IP rights.  

China may continue to steal American IP and innovations when presented with the opportunities, but that will leave them perpetually behind in terms of innovation and opportunity for those who seek to prosper via those innovations.  

Accordingly, at a moment when innovation can determine military advantage, economic leadership and global influence, protecting IP is thus about more than simply prosperity.  In our growing strategic rivalry with China, we must lean into what makes us exceptional, particularly our legal system that protects IP rights and creations of the mind.  Let China continue to centralize control and treat ideas and IP as government-owned commodities.  The U.S. can remain the global beacon for inventors, creators and entrepreneurs.  

In that competition, America’s ongoing protection of IP isn’t merely a moral good or economic principle, it’s a geopolitical asset.