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Highlights • Compares the innovation strategies of Chinese and European wind turbine firms based on patent-analysis. • European firms are stronger in most of strategic dimensions, while Chinese firms present strong learning capacity. • Chinese firms have limited opportunity to surpass European counterparts in the near future. Abstract Based on a patent-analysis method, this paper compares the firm-level technology pathways of wind turbine firms from China and Europe, and examines the firms' unique innovation strategies that may lead to these pathways being modified to capitalize on any opportunities that arise. This paper finds that Chinese firms have different firm-level pathways compared to their European counterparts, whereby they are influenced by different innovation strategies that involve technological foci, learning, and R&D collaboration, as well as globalization strategies. We find that European firms are stronger in most of these strategic dimensions, while Chinese firms demonstrate a strong learning capacity and customized innovations. We propose that there might be a limited divergence of the sector-level technological trajectories between China and Europe. In addition, we suggest that there is limited opportunity for Chinese firms to leapfrog with regard to the existing technology trajectories and surpass their European counterparts in the near future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]