Technology and financial center facilitates opening-up, leverages complementary resources

Chengdu is grasping the opportunities created by China's Belt and Road Initiative by advancing its opening-up and targeting the pan-Eurasian region to create an international innovation platform for exchanges.

Home to the first national innovation demonstration zone in western China and the core area of China (Sichuan) Pilot Free Trade Zone, Chengdu is actively integrating itself into the global innovation system, local officials said.

To promote in-depth cooperation and leverage innovation resources, the Chengdu Hi-Tech Industrial Development Zone and Silicon Valley City Group - composed of the cities of Dublin, Mountain View and Menlo Park - and Him Group Holdings signed a memorandum of understanding on March 27.

The three parties plan to build the Chengdu-Silicon Valley Technology and Finance Center, a limited liability company that will be a part of both the Chengdu Hi-Tech Zone and Silicon Valley.

The joint venture will help to implement unified management in the two locations, enabling projects at different stages to obtain mutual support and make use of complementary advantages in China and the United States.

Him Group Holdings and the Silicon Valley City Group will invest $30 million in the center. Him Group will provide the center with operations management, project allocation and consulting services.

The Chengdu-Silicon Valley Technology and Finance Center will set up three major business segments - a technology transfer center and a financial service center in both Chengdu and Silicon Valley, and a one-stop service platform based on free trade in Silicon Valley.

To promote the management of intellectual property and the release of joint research and development results, the center will also serve as an exchange platform for external technology management, providing support for the promotion and application of Chengdu's science and technology innovation projects in Silicon Valley, the United States.

These support activities give enterprises greater impetus to expand their operations in Silicon Valley.

David Haubert, mayor of Dublin, California, said that Chengdu has drawn much attention from the world as an important city involved in the Belt and Road Initiative.

He said he believes that Chengdu will take advantage of greater opportunities in Silicon Valley by building the technology and finance centers on both sides.

Officials at the Chengdu Hi-Tech Industrial Development Zone said that the cooperation is the latest achievement in the Top Science Parks Partnership Plan, a program initiated to form a complementary sharing platform gathering professionals, technology, capital and industries in first-class high-tech parks.

The initiative was endorsed by more than 20 scientific and technological parks, including the Chengdu high-tech zone and the Sophia-Antipolis Park in France, aiming to build a sci-tech park community of common destiny.

hanlu@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 05/18/2018 page6)