With the 21st World Intellectual Property Day coming on Monday, Daren Tang, director general of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), spoke highly of China's efforts in the past four decades since it joined the WIPO.

"In the past 41 years, China has made tremendous progress and achievements in the field of intellectual property rights to further develop the intellectual property ecosystem," he said in an exclusive interview with China Media Group. 

With innovation becoming more and more global, the Asia-Pacific region has played a role in promoting innovation, he said, noting 70 percent of the intellectual property rights application come from the Asian region, compared to only 40 percent 20 years ago, and China ranked first in the number of international patent applications in the past two years. 

For this year's World Intellectual Property Day, it is necessary to help small and medium-sized enterprises use intellectual property to build more competitive and resilient enterprises, he said.