Decade-old event yields series of achievements

The China-EU Business and Technology Cooperation Fair has played a pivotal role in promoting cooperation between its host city Chengdu and Europe in the past 10 years.

The fair has contributed to many intergovernmental cooperation programs. Chengdu started running direct flights to London and Frankfurt and will have a direct route to Prague soon. The city has shuttling freight trains along the New Eurasian Land Bridge to Lodz, Poland. Chengdu became a sister city with Horsens in Denmark and has a China-Denmark new energy and environmental protection research and development application center.

Steinbeis China Technology Transfer Center's project is located in the city, while the China-Czech aviation industry cluster in Chengdu has developed quickly. The Czech Republic opened its consulate general in Chengdu in September and the China-France Montpellier Elementary School opened in Chengdu High-Tech Industrial Development Zone, deepening sister-city relations.

More than 50 European business agencies and high-tech enterprises from Austria, Belgium, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Poland and Denmark moved to Chengdu's high-tech zone as a result of the fair.

More than 40 cooperation agreements in areas including technology transfer, investment and trade, worth 500 million yuan ($78.5 million), were signed between China and European enterprises. These generated about 2 billion yuan in production value in upstream and downstream industries and boosted the innovation ability and international competence of small and medium-sized enterprises from China and Europe.

The Chengdu high-tech zone also serves as a springboard for Chinese enterprises to go global. In April 2012, Chengdu Di'ao Group, a pharmaceutical company, started cooperating with SU BioMedicine from the Netherlands to develop a capsule treating heart disease, which became the first Chinese patented medicine to appear in the EU medicine market.

The Centauri 1.5T superconductivity magnetic resonance medical imaging system developed by Di'ao Group was installed and came into operation in Lithuania in April 2013, becoming the first made-in-China medical equipment of its kind to enter the EU market.

Currently, 104 of the world's top 500 enterprises have operations in the high-tech zone in Chengdu, including Intel, GE, Siemens and Philips, as well as 60 research and development centers from home and abroad.

Foreign investment

Last year, foreign capital in practical use in the high-tech zone hit $2.14 billion. The total import and export value in its bonded zone was $28.5 billion, ranked third in China among all bonded zones.

Fan Yi, head of the high-tech zone's administrative committee, said, "We support famous enterprises, universities and institutes to set up R&D agencies in the zone, and we look forward to introducing a host of talented professionals from around the world to build the zone into a base for international production capacity cooperation, and the industrialization of new technologies."

"We are also paying attention to implementing the experience of the Shanghai Free Trade Zone in Chengdu, and facilitate trade and boost the development of cross-border e-commerce, and bonded trade, so as to build a business environment according to international standards," Fan added.

In June, central authorities approved the high-tech zone as the eighth national-level innovation model zone. On Oct 31, the governments of China and South Korea agreed to set up a China-South Korea innovation park in the high-tech zone.

According to the zone's administrative committee, the China-South Korea innovation park will be composed of a number of incubators and an industrial park.

Fan said that the Chengdu high-tech zone will actively support international industrial cooperation and development, deepen cooperation with Singapore, South Korea, and Cuba, as well as world-class science and technology parks in developed countries and emerging economies, to build the zone into a world-class platform for talent, capital and technology.

Contact the writers through liyang@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 11/20/2015 page6)