SHANGHAI, Nov. 11 (Xinhua) -- In east China's Yangtze River Delta, a four-hour drive can take manufacturers through a network of suppliers capable of providing every component needed to build a new-energy vehicle. At one factory, a six-axis industrial robot can be produced every 12 minutes.
These examples reflect a broad shift as the region turns its tightly clustered research and innovation hubs into advanced industrial capacity, making what China calls new quality productive forces the main engine of its growth.
The Yangtze River Delta, comprising Shanghai and the provinces of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui, now accounts for about one-quarter of China's GDP and nearly one-third of national R&D spending.
According to a recent national assessment of regional science and technology innovation, Shanghai ranked first in comprehensive sci-tech innovation nationwide, with Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui also among the top performers.
INNOVATION CLUSTERS
This transformation is particularly visible in Shanghai's Zhangjiang Science City, where advanced industries are increasingly concentrated.
At a lab in the Shanghai R&D center of XtalPi, an AI drug discovery company listed in Hong Kong, human researchers are largely absent. Weighing powders, controlling temperature during mixing, sampling, filtering and running post-processing analyzes are all handled by robotic workstations directed by AI, with large volumes of experimental data flowing continuously to back-end systems.
"Zhangjiang offers a unique advantage in clustering innovation resources," said Wang Mingtai, XtalPi's senior vice president. "From overseas partners and major research institutes to upstream and downstream suppliers, connections can be established quickly here."
By June 2026, the company had established partnerships with 17 of the world's top 20 pharmaceutical companies. Since the beginning of the year, more than six innovative drug programs involving its discovery technology had reported positive progress in clinical trials.
Its autonomous research platform is also being applied in chemicals, new materials and new energy, alongside collaborations with leading universities and research institutes.
The expanding network illustrates how Zhangjiang is bringing together scientific research, industrial partners and the development of new medicines and technologies, helping to move discoveries beyond the laboratory.
Over the past five years, industrial output from firms above designated size in Zhangjiang has totaled 1.75 trillion yuan (about 260 billion U.S. dollars). In the first half of 2026, its three priority sectors -- integrated circuits, biomedicine and AI -- generated 82.28 billion yuan in output, up 14.8 percent from a year earlier. The area is now home to eight major global chip companies, 35 registered AI large models, and one in ten innovative drugs developed in China.
Zhangjiang's experience shows how a concentration of research institutions, technology companies and industrial resources can accelerate innovation, driving new quality productive forces. The same approach is taking shape across the wider Yangtze River Delta, with its four provincial-level divisions complementing one another, especially in AI and the digital economy.
COMPLEMENTARY STRENGTHS
A recent digital development report describes this regional division of labor in simple terms: with Shanghai strengthening foundational research, Jiangsu focusing on manufacturing, Zhejiang excelling in application scenarios, and Anhui aggregating computing power.
It allows companies to combine capabilities across the region and form a networked innovation system, rather than replicate them in one place.
Jiangsu has made "AI Plus" a central driver of manufacturing upgrading. Under its action plan, the penetration rate of next-generation intelligent terminals and AI agents is expected to exceed 70 percent by 2027, with the AI industry surpassing 1 trillion yuan by 2030.
In Suzhou, for example, efforts are underway to develop 150 industrial vertical large models, along with more than 200 high-quality industrial datasets, pushing AI applications from quality control and maintenance deeper into R&D and design.
Zhejiang, meanwhile, is encouraging businesses to develop practical applications for AI, activating its intelligent economy. In 2025, the province's core AI industry revenue exceeded 710 billion yuan, growing by more than 20 percent.
The capital city, Hangzhou, is positioning itself as a leading "AI city," deploying multimodal large models and embodied intelligence, while a major open-source model community and five 10,000-GPU computing clusters aim to lower the cost for small and medium-sized enterprises to adopt AI.
Anhui is focusing on expanding its digital infrastructure and putting it to wider use. The province plans to build 14,000 new 5G base stations and 4,000 5G-A base stations in 2026, with intelligent computing capacity exceeding 65,000 petaflops.
A special fund for data-element reform in the province will support AI scenario projects with up to 10 million yuan each, accelerating deployment in manufacturing, public services and healthcare.
CROSS-REGIONAL LINKS
Cooperation across the Yangtze River Delta extends beyond AI and the digital economy. It also shows how innovation capacity generated in one city can be rapidly converted into industrial output in another.
Suzhou, for example, has 50 enterprises in the supply chain for China's C919 passenger aircraft assembled in Shanghai, and about 180 auto-parts manufacturers have become tier-one suppliers for Shanghai-based SAIC Volkswagen and Tesla.
Meanwhile, scientific instruments at Shanghai's universities and research institutes can be booked online by Suzhou enterprises for remote testing and cross-regional settlement.
As of October 2026, the Yangtze River Delta region had shared 75,000 sets of large-scale scientific instruments, with sci-tech innovation vouchers covering about 820 million yuan in services.
These links make integration tangible: firms can access specialized suppliers and costly scientific equipment across administrative boundaries, lowering duplication and making better use of existing resources.
Luo Dajin, director of the Shanghai municipal science and technology commission, said Shanghai would build on its strengths as an international economic, financial, trade, shipping and sci-tech innovation hub, and work with Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui to build a sci-tech innovation corridor and other joint innovation zones across the region.
Recent data suggest the shift is gaining momentum. In the first three quarters of 2026, high-tech manufacturing output grew 15.1 percent in Jiangsu, 16 percent in Zhejiang and 50.3 percent in Anhui, while Shanghai's three priority industries expanded by 17.1 percent.
The region's division of labor has moved beyond the old linear pattern of industrial relocation from Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang to Anhui, and is now shaped by functional and structural complementarity, said Zeng Gang, director of the Institute of Urban Development, East China Normal University.
"New quality productive forces have become the main engine of industrial growth in the Yangtze River Delta," he said. ■
