James Kynge

I don't know.

I don't want to prejudge, but they seem a little bit out there.

But some of them are genuinely impressive.

I mean, you mentioned drones a minute ago.

China has got these flying taxis, flying cars that are now...

leading the world in terms of autonomous passenger flight.

There's a company in Shenzhen called Ehang, and China's going to pilot the first genuine commercial transport using these passenger flying cars.

One other I'd like to mention, which I think is truly amazing, is something called the T-Flight Hyperloop.

which is China's attempt to use a train to go faster than a plane.

And this, effectively a train that travels using magnetic levitation, so its wheels don't even touch the track.

It just skims over the track.

It can travel up to 387 miles per hour.

Yeah, I mean, I don't want to write off the US in any way at all.

I mean, obviously, there's a lot of very impressive innovations coming out of the US.

But one number comes to me, and that is the number of patents being applied for at the World Intellectual Property Office of the United Nations.

Chinese individuals and companies have got 1.8 million of these patent applications, and US

companies and individuals have just over 500,000.

So I'm not saying that this conclusively proves anything because, you know, you can inflate patent claims, you can get patents for things that are not very useful.

So I don't want to say that that figure tells a story, but I think it might point to a direction of travel at least.

So I'm going rather bold this week, Alice.