High-tech zone's lofty goal

Massive development area aims to be among best in the world by 2020, Lu Hongyan and Ma Lie report from Xi'an.

The Xi'an High-Tech Industries Development Zone, one of China's top development zones, gained approval from the State Council to be the ninth national proprietary innovation demonstration zone earlier this month.

Its approval comes on the heels of zones in Beijing, Shanghai, Wuhan, Shenzhen, Tianjin and Chengdu as well as the provinces of Jiangsu and Hunan.

The Xi'an zone is now expected to further speed up its development and increasingly contribute to the economic growth of the region and the country.

According to the Ministry of Science and Technology, such demonstration zones approved by the central government play a leading role in improving technological innovation as well as accelerate the development of strategic emerging industries.

The zone's goal is to join the ranks of the world's top high-tech zones by 2020. It also aims to develop advanced industries, lead the country in economic and social development and create an efficient innovation mechanism.

The demonstration zones thus far approved in China are expected to play an exemplary role for the economic and social development of other high-tech zones and regions.

The demonstration zones deepen financing reforms to support technological innovation, encourage new industries to participate in major national science and technology projects, implement preferential tax policies to support innovative enterprises and design a development plan for local economies.

The Xi'an zone, located in a southern suburb of the capital of Shaanxi province in Northwest China, was approved by the State Council as one of the first high-tech zones in the country in 1991. It has a multitude of local science and education resources to build up its core competitiveness, promote the industrialization of scientific and technological achievements and develop high-tech industries.

As a result, the zone's average annual growth in major economic indicators was more than 30 percent over the past decades. Over the past five years, it has grown by an average of 12.4 percent.

Xi'an is the starting point of the ancient Silk Road that economically and culturally linked China, Central Asia and Europe. Home to more than 3,000 research institutes and 63 universities, the city is ranked third among Chinese cities for its strength in science and education.

In 2014, the city's GDP grew by 10.5 percent, with the high-tech zone contributing much to that growth. The zone's total revenue in 2014 reached 1,107 billion yuan ($173.9 billion), ranking it third among high-tech zones in the country. It generated 118 billion yuan in foreign trade last year, nearly 80 percent of the total foreign trade in Shaanxi province.

The success of the zone owes much to the rapid development of its high-tech industries. The zone has an information technology industry chain with a focus on three industrial clusters: semiconductors, intelligent terminals and software and information services. Their combined industrial value reached 300 billion yuan in 2014.

The zone's semiconductor industry has attracted global industry giants including Samsung, Micron Technology and Applied Materials as well as more than 30 regional research and development centers of Fortune 500 companies including Samsung Data R&D Center, Intel Northwest R&D Center and GE Innovation Center, in addition to a number of renowned domestic enterprises.

In the intelligent terminals industrial cluster, Chinese giants ZTE and Huawei have R&D centers with more than 10,000 employees each. ZTE's facility produces 45 million mobile phones annually. Because of the cluster, the zone is one of the world's most important smartphone production centers.

In the software and information service industry, Xi'an Software Park is one of China's five bases for exports of software and has a floor area of more than 2 million square meters of research and employs more than 120,000 people.

The zone also has an R&D and manufacturing industry chain for automobiles and energy equipment.

BYD Auto, the Chinese automobile manufacturer based in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, produces 15,000 new-energy cars in the zone.

Heavy truck gearboxes made by Shaanxi Fast Auto Drive Group made in the zone account for more than 70 percent of the global market.

Promotion of innovation

One of the earliest enterprise incubators in China, the zone's Xi'an Pioneering Park was the first of its kind to receive an Asian incubator award.

The park has 25 incubators, 13 of which are recognized at the national level. The total floor area of the incubators is more than 2 million square meters and there is over 900,000 square meters in so-called high-tech service stations.

Since the park was established in 1993, 1,047 enterprises have graduated from the incubators, with more than 2,200 enterprises currently under incubation.

There are over 50,000 employees working for these enterprises.

The park built the first accelerator for scientific enterprises in western China, has more than 140 high-growth enterprises and cultivated a number of small key enterprises with proprietary intellectual property rights, such as Forstar, a leading firm in coaxial connectors manufacturing, and Libang Pharmaceutical.

The Startup in Xi'an, a pre-incubation base established in 2014 is a platform for innovation and entrepreneurship.

By the end of 2014, more than 20 enterprises in the zone achieved annual output value of over 10 billion yuan and the annual output value of more than 400 firms reached 100 million yuan, top among the high-tech zones in China.

To better transfer technological achievements made by the institutes and universities in Xi'an, the Xi'an Science and Technology Bureau and the zone established the Xi'an Technology Resources Market in 2011. It is a platform for trading in technology, equipment sharing and cooperation and exchanges.

The market has gathered more than 900 universities, colleges, research institutes and military industry units, 16,896 experts in various fields, 7,325 technological achievements, technological information of 7,737 high-tech companies, and more than 7,000 large equipment units for sharing.

So far, the market has held 167 events for exchanges and cooperation between research institutes, universities and enterprises, and technology trading valued at 53 billion yuan.

One of the key scientific and technological service platforms in China, Xi'an Technology Resources Market is stepping up its efforts to promote the overall utilization of scientific and technological resources.

Civil-military industry integration is also a priority for the zone's administrative committee.

Xi'an is a key scientific and industrial hub for China's national defense and has an industrial park to promote cooperation and interaction between military and civilian enterprises.

The zone is home to 298 civil-military cooperative enterprises with an output value of 80 billion yuan in 2014.

The zone continues to advance construction on new high-tech parks. It has built parks for facilitating reforms, software development, free trade and promoting the communication, biopharmaceuticals, new materials, energy conservation and environmental protection sectors.

The zone has a forest coverage rate of 41 percent and a number of amenities, including schools and hospitals. The zone is the first national environmental protection demonstration zone in central and western China.

Contact the writers at luhongyan@chinadaily.com.cn and malie@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 09/29/2015 page7)