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December 19, 2014

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Home » City specials » Chengdu

Ambitious Chengdu eyes high-tech growth

CHENGDU is striving to join the first tier of cities pushing China’s technology development.

Chengdu Tech, a weibo account managed by the Chengdu Science and Technology Bureau, is wooed by content ranging from the latest technological breakthroughs around the world to innovative ideas worth sharing. The account has attracted nearly 218,000 followers. The microblog also posts information and policies to help people get the most out of technology and make their lives more convenient.

One of its latest posts was about portable houses designed by Spanish houses. They invented a new material that can be reshaped when heated. Houses made of the material can be moved and rebuilt easily. The houses have great potential in China.

Another post was about 11 universities in Chengdu opening their libraries to the general public. They included top schools like Sichuan University, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China and Southwest Jiao Tong University. Such an open-minded attitude about sharing knowledge and resources, initiated by Chengdu, is expected to spread and it’s anyone’s guess as to where it will lead.

Of course, the majority of posts cover supportive policies that the capital of Sichuan Province offers in the technology sector.

“Chengdu has become a model in building an economy built on innovation,” said Cao Jianlin, China’s deputy minister of science and technology. “The city has sound economic foundations, a rich cultural background and a variety of research facilities that feed its appetite for technological advancement.”

The Chengdu government has vowed to build the city into a capital of innovation and entrepreneurship. It is among the country’s model cities for innovation with best practices in intellectual property protection and is also one of China’s software centers.

Self-developed hi-tech products

A spate of self-developed high-tech products are incubated in Chengdu, including China’s best magnetic resonance machine and the country’s leading automatic air control system for both military and civilian use.

A traditional Chinese medicine treating heart and blood illnesses has been developed in Chengdu. It’s the first TCM remedy to be approved for sale as a medicine by the European Union.

Chengdu is now home to 11 state-level innovative and high-tech companies and 1,500 at the provincial level. More than 500 research facilities are jointly run by businesses and high-end educational institutions.

At the same time, Chengdu has 718 scientific research centers as well as 46 universities, where 33 top scientists appointed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering work. Apart from that, Chengdu has 1.35 million professionals with special technical skills.

In 2013, Chengdu received 59,370 patent applications, up 21.4 percent from a year earlier and ranking it third among its peer cities. Some of the new inventions are in emerging industries like mobile Internet, 3D printing, new energy and biomedicine — all considered future cornerstones of the city’s economy.

Last year, Chengdu’s high-tech industries produced 512.3 billion yuan (US$83.3 billion) worth of output, up 27.4 percent from a year earlier. The city has developed several industrial clusters including information technology, automobile, aviation and software.

Indeed, Chengdu has powerful state-owned technology companies like China National Bluestar (Group) Co Ltd, a chemical giant celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, and AVIC Chengdu Aircraft Industrial (Group) Co Ltd, a leader in the country’s aerospace sector.

It also nurtures young start-up companies.

The local government has worked to bolster cooperation between businesses, universities and research centers, a model that has worked well for Silicon Valley.

Under such a model, Chengdu’s technology transfer growth is entering a fast track. The establishment of the Chengdu Technology Transfer Group in 2012 is targeted at boosting the development of small and medium-sized enterprises in the tech sector. It envisions a four-step process: discover technologies at universities and companies, filter those worth developing, find business partners for developers and directly invest in technology transfers.

The city’s finance sector is also supportive. There are three banks dedicated to the tech sector in the city. They set up an angel fund of 2 billion yuan for start-up companies, a risk compensation fund of 200 million yuan for failed projects, and a seed fund of 300 million yuan to turn technologies into products.

The city also has 140 venture capital firms with up to 40 billion yuan at their disposal. The firms have invested in more than 500 firms so far.

In addition, Chengdu has built incubation parks for start-up companies to help them through various stages of growth. There are four state-level and university-led scientific parks and 23 at the provincial level. More than 5,000 companies are now based in these parks.

Foreign companies are another important source to stimulate Chengdu’s passion for innovation and technology. Chengdu has attracted 262 Fortune 500 companies to the city including tech giants like GE, Dell and Intel. The city has also inked an agreement with Singapore to build a world-class scientific park.

Behind all this, the city’s efforts to boost intellectual property protection has provided a strong incentive for tech companies to use Chengdu as a base.

As one of China’s first IPR model city and the country’s first model city for copyright protection, Chengdu has strengthened efforts to guarantee the protection of knowledge ownership in recent years. It provides efficient legal services in this regard and has established a juristic system covering even nearby cities. Such efforts have won Chengdu a place of the lowest investment risks in China by some European media agencies.

Last month, the 2014 International Modern Industrial Technology Expo was held in Chengdu, sending a clear message to the world that the city is keen to emerge on the global stage of industrial technology development.

The municipal government has stated in an official document that by 2017, the city aims to have 20 state-level innovative companies and 100 industry leaders. It also wants 70 percent of large and medium-sized companies to have research and development centers in the city.

Within three years, the city has targeted the development of 300 new high-tech products in strategic industries. It has set a target of at least 1,000 patents, of which 200 can be considered an industry standard.

The document also states that the city plans to recruit at least 500 senior professionals in the tech sector to speed up the process.




 

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