NEW YORK－China is the only mid-income economy on the Global Innovation Index 2018's list of the world's 20 most innovative economies.

The annual ranking, released on July 10, also showed China has the second-largest number of science and technology clusters and is making rapid progress on clean energy technologies.

China climbed to 17 in the rankings from 22 last year.

"The case fits into a trend we've seen for several years now of China rising in the rankings," said Francis Gurry, director general of the World Intellectual Property Organization, at the launch of the index.

He noted that China is the only economy from the mid-income group to be ranked in the top 20.

Explaining the leap, he said China's economy is transforming from a labor intensive one toward one with high-value addition, with innovation being a central element in this structural transformation driven by a top-down strategy.

While Switzerland continued to dominate for the eighth year, the United States slid from fourth in 2017 to sixth; though in absolute terms, the country remained the top contributor in key innovation inputs and outputs.

In addition, the US came second after China in its number of researchers, patents and scientific and technical publications, noted Bruno Lanvin of INSEAD, a leading business school that copublished the index.

The Global Innovation Index ranks 126 economies based on 80 indicators, ranging from intellectual property filing rates to mobile-application creation.

The index is copublished by WIPO, Cornell University and INSEAD.

This year, also among the top 10 innovative economies are the Netherlands, Sweden, Britain, Singapore, Finland, Denmark, Germany and Ireland.

In 2017, the Global Innovation Index introduced a special section that reveals findings on science and technology clusters in countries and regions.

This year's survey found China ranked second in the number of such hot spots (16) after the US (26), followed by Germany (8), Britain (4) and Canada (4).

Again, Tokyo-Yokohama in Japan tops the overall innovation cluster ranking, followed by Shenzhen-Hong Kong in China, a repeat of last year.

Besides China, there are clusters from five mid-income countries－Brazil, India, Iran, Russia and Turkey－in the top 100.

Commenting on the inclusion of this survey into the Global Innovation Index, Gurry said the science and technology hot spots are "a measure of the strength of the innovation of a particular country", adding that their existence is a great encouragement to cross-fertilization among enterprises and research institutions.

The WIPO chief also noticed China's shift from quantitative pursuit to quality in its intellectual property applications.

As a reflection of the change, recent research of global leading brands showed Chinese brands are rising in value and becoming better-known throughout the world.

The Global Innovation Index 2018 shows a waning growth rate in environmentally friendly energy-related patenting, with green patent publishing rates peaking in 2012.

Also, Gurry said patent applications in renewable energies and environmentally sustainable technologies peaked in 2014.

However, projections indicate that by 2040 the world will require up to 30 percent more energy than it needs today and conventional approaches to expanding the energy supply are unsustainable in the face of climate change.