More to gain, less to lose? Chinese firms’ US patenting strategies amidst decoupling

US-China geopolitical tensions have produced decoupling policies that restrict Chinese firms’ access to most assets within strategic industries in the US. Yet Chinese firms in strategic industries can still legally obtain patents in the US, though doing so poses political risks and even this access may be restricted in the future. How do Chinese firms seek assets abroad in this new geopolitical environment? Drawing on the Attention-Based View, we argue that decoupling redirects attention of managers at Chinese firms in strategic industries to significantly increase US patenting because restrictions on alternative assets heighten patents’ relative value, reduce the perceived costs of exploiting them aggressively, and create urgency to secure them before access is potentially restricted. In contrast, managers with lived experience in the US or politically similar markets are theorized to perceive greater political risks of this strategy, leading their firms to increase patenting less. Using a difference-in-differences approach analyzing USPTO patent filings by publicly-listed Chinese firms from 2013–2023, we find support for our hypotheses. Robustness checks, including tests showing no comparable increase in patenting by the Chinese firms in other major foreign markets, corroborate these results. Further, supplementary analysis indicates that the increase in patenting is associated with fewer claims per patent — a pattern consistent with the strategic use of patents, potentially as weapons and transactable assets, rather than proportionally greater inventiveness. Our findings highlight how geopolitical decoupling intensifies firms’ pursuit of still-accessible assets in host markets, tempered by managers’ attention to political risks.