Environment-related patent applications in China have surged over the past decade, Thursday's China Daily reported.

The country ranked first globally in patent filings between 2008 and 2017, the newspaper cited a recent report as saying.

The annual average growth in patent filings from China stood at 34.15 percent in the physical pollution control sector and 31.74 percent in the segment of soil and underground water remediation, it said.

In other technological sectors of air pollution prevention, environmental monitoring, water pollution control, and solid waste treatment and disposal, the average annual growth in Chinese patent filings surpassed 24 percent.

The report was compiled by the China Association of Environmental Protection Industry and the Hefei Institute of Physical Science at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Despite the sheer size, China did not have a similar proportion of standard-essential patents in the field, according to the newspaper.

The country's essential patents in air pollution prevention and combat accounted for a meager 5.6 percent, although its total applications in the field made up more than one-third of the total.

"We shall protect intellectual property and increase the quality of patents to prevent the waste of research resources," Gui Huaqiao, a report compiler from the Hefei Institute of Physical Science, was quoted as saying.