China’s fast growth in intellectual property has led to accusations by U.S. President Donald Trump that it has stolen American ideas, but the head of the U.N. World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) said it was hard to tell.“The reality is a new competitor has arrived,” WIPO Director General Francis Gurry told a news conference in Geneva.

“We will just observe what occurs now but I would say that the commercial, economic and geopolitical reality that we must take cognizance of is that China has arrived as a major technological competitor.”At current rates China will overtake the United States to become the biggest source of international patent applications in the WIPO system within three years, WIPO said.The top filers of patent applications at WIPO in 2017 were…