Abstract: Considerable achievenments have been achieved by China in terms of the volume of patent applications and patent grants. However, there are also issues, including the domestic concentration of patent applications. As the key link of government performance management, the role of goal-setting in them needs to be verified. Base on the panel data of 30 provinces in China from 2001-2010, this paper use Difference-in-difference (DID) model to study the impact of setting a goal of the invention patent grant amount in the five-year-plan on the number of invention patent grant and the proportion of overseas invention patent applications. The results show that setting a goal of the invention patent grant amount in the five-year-plan has a significant positive impact on the number of invention patent grant , and poses a significant negative impact on the proportion of overseas invention patent. The current number-oriented patent goal-setting makes the government pay high attention to promoting the growth of the number of patents, but the original meaning of patents intellectual property protection always be ignored.