BEIJING, Sept. 1 (Xinhua) -- China is leveraging its three major innovation centers to drive industrial upgrading and foster new quality productive forces by tapping their respective strengths, said the guests on the latest episode of China Economic Roundtable, an all-media talk show hosted by Xinhua News Agency.
China has designated Beijing, Shanghai and the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area as three major international sci-tech innovation centers. Last year, the country moved to broaden their reach, extending the Beijing center across the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region and the Shanghai center across the Yangtze River Delta.
Chen Baoming, director of the Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China under the Ministry of Science and Technology, said that the three international sci-tech innovation centers have made solid progress in recent years, with their respective strengths becoming increasingly prominent.
He noted that Beijing's R&D intensity has remained around 6 percent, and the city tops the world in the number of highly cited scientists. Shanghai has produced leading original achievements in physics, chemistry and life sciences. The Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area leads the country in the number of high-tech enterprises and Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) patent applications.
Yi Tong, director of the Institute for Innovation Development Strategy at Beijing Academy of Science and Technology, noted that Beijing has been accelerating the commercialization of research outcomes, and optimizing the industrial ecosystem by building a range of innovation platforms.
Zha Hao, chairman and CEO of Shanghai Smartlogic Technology Ltd., has seen firsthand how Shanghai's policies to foster innovation-driven industries can benefit companies like his. As a firm specializing in scientific computing and AI for science, Smartlogic has benefited from initiatives that connect companies with real-world applications and help speed commercialization across the value chain.
For his part, Zhang Zhengang, a professor at South China University of Technology, said that the high-end manufacturing sector in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area has shifted from "scale expansion" to "structural upgrading."
The area is exploring a distinctive model of moving innovation from universities to industry, with "research and development in Hong Kong and Macao, commercialization on the mainland," according to the professor. So far, five Hong Kong universities have established technology commercialization platforms in Qianhai in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, incubating more than 150 sci-tech projects.
Looking ahead, the professor called for greater focus on three areas to strengthen the centers' role as sources of original innovation: basic research, major scientific facilities and the commercialization of research outcomes, providing core technologies to drive new quality productive forces.
China has vowed to improve regional innovation systems during the 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026-2030). The systems bring together government, businesses, universities and research institutes, allowing different regions to better leverage their respective strengths and helping move research findings from laboratories toward commercial applications. ■
