Building a platform for high-quality development

On the edge of the Kubuqi Desert in Hangjin Banner, Ordos, the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, rows of deep-blue photovoltaic panels stand on what was once barren saline-alkali land. Beneath the panels, instead of desolation, clusters of salt-tolerant grasses sway in the breeze. Three years of research by a team including our Inner Mongolia University of Technology in collaboration with local enterprises has helped develop this "photovoltaics + ecological restoration" technology.

Each solar panel captures sunlight above to generate green energy, while improving soil conditions and restoring vegetation below. This example of high-quality development in Inner Mongolia shows innovation is not an abstract concept, but a tangible force rooted in the land, transforming capabilities and improving lives.

As 2027 marks the 80th anniversary of the founding of Inner Mongolia autonomous region, its administration must seize the opportunities outlined in the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30) and help the region drive high-quality development through the effective transformation of high-quality innovation achievements.

Inner Mongolia must focus on leveraging its resource base and industrial foundation, and pursuing a dual approach driven by both demand and problem-solving to cultivate innovation achievements aligned with regional industrial development.

First, guided by the development framework of competitive, potential and forward-looking industries, priority should be given to upgrading traditional industries toward high-end, intelligent and green development.

In the energy sector, Inner Mongolia ranks first in China in terms of installed renewable capacity. By the end of 2025, the region's installed capacity of wind power had reached 100.33 gigawatts, its photovoltaic capacity had exceeded 40 GW, and its cumulative power generation from new energy sources had reached 250 billion kilowatt-hours‌.

To address the intermittency of wind power and grid integration challenges, our research team is developing integrated "wind-solar-storage" smart dispatch systems. Building on China's first generation grid-load-storage integrated project in Ulaanqab — the world's largest demonstration project for an integrated solution involving power supply, power grid, power load, and energy storage — the local consumption rate of green electricity has exceeded 90 percent.

In energy storage, technological pathways such as vanadium flow batteries, compressed air storage and hydrogen storage are being developed. Our university is working on an empirical platform coupling that integrates wind, solar, hydrogen and storage to tackle long-duration storage challenges.

Green hydrogen production, in particular, represents a frontier technology that converts renewable electricity into hydrogen for large-scale storage and transport across time and space. It is key to addressing renewable energy utilization and achieving deep decarbonization in industry. Inner Mongolia is actively advancing green hydrogen, which can provide zero-carbon feedstock for coal, steel and transport sectors, while also opening new channels for "west-to-east hydrogen transmission".

In the dairy sector, extending the industry chain and upgrading the value chain are crucial for increasing incomes among farmers and herders. Moving beyond the traditional model of selling raw milk, advances in deep processing technologies have enabled the production of high-value products such as infant formula, milk fat, bioactive peptides and lactoferrin, raising the value of raw milk by three to five times per metric ton.

Leading local companies such as Yili Group and Mengniu Dairy have established national innovation centers, achieving domestic production of lactoferrin and breaking foreign monopolies. This not only means safer, higher-quality dairy products for consumers but also opens up a market worth hundreds of billions of yuan for investors.

In the rare earth sector, the focus is shifting from exporting raw materials to producing high-end materials and components, with breakthroughs in applications such as permanent magnets, catalysis, hydrogen storage and polishing. Plans are underway to build a national laboratory for rare earth new materials, driving the industry from a trillion-yuan scale toward even greater heights.

Second, efforts should center on integrating green development with digital computing power to build a distinctive portfolio of innovation achievements. Technologies combining desertification control with renewable energy development — such as the photovoltaic arrays that reduce wind speed and evaporation while supporting vegetation underneath in Alshaa League of Inner Mongolia — are being advanced.

In the area of intelligent grassland ecological monitoring, high-resolution satellite and unmanned aerial vehicle remote sensing are being used to build large-scale dynamic models of grassland biomass and carbon sinks, enabling precise management of livestock-grass balance.

Third, the region is focusing on future industries. Leveraging its exceptional advantages in smart computing — including ultra-low electricity costs, a cool climate and policy support from a national project — the Horinger New Area in Inner Mongolia's capital of Hohhot has built the country's largest smart computing hub cluster, with an installed computing capacity exceeding 12,000 petaflops, surpassing that in developed cities such as Shenzhen in Guangdong province and Hangzhou in Zhejiang province. Major industry players including Huawei, Alibaba, Baidu Inc, China Mobile and China Telecom have already established operations in the region.

Rather than trailing behind developed regions, Inner Mongolia is capitalizing on its "computing haven" effect to position itself as a cost-effective powerhouse for national AI training and inference.

Focusing on areas such as computing networks, the low-altitude economy, artificial intelligence and intelligent robotics, Inner Mongolia is prioritizing breakthroughs in frontier technologies including large-model training and inference, trusted data spaces, and drone-based herding and inspection. For example, the Inner Mongolia University of Technology has partnered with Huawei to establish an industry-education integration base, developing a large-model training platform that supports both Mongolian and Chinese languages.

In Xilingol League, a pilot project for automated drone herding has been launched, where a single drone can manage up to 5,000 sheep, cutting labor costs by 80 percent.

Translating research outcomes into real-world applications is a systematic endeavor. Inner Mongolia must therefore build a three-dimensional transformation system that integrates platform support, institutional safeguards and ecosystem optimization. Such a system is essential to remove bottlenecks in the commercialization process, unlock the full potential of all transformation factors and decisively address the core issue.

It is necessary to establish a number of specialized, open, shared and fully functional pilot-scale testing bases and public service platforms to provide convenient, efficient and cost-effective services for all types of innovation entities.

In industrial clusters such as Hohhot, Baotou, Ordos and Ulaanqab, efforts should be made to accelerate the development of specialized pilot-scale testing bases in key sectors such as new energy and artificial intelligence, ensuring comprehensive pilot-scale support across major industries. At the same time, the industrial innovation center model should be expanded, while accelerating the development of new technology commercialization platforms, thereby creating a new benchmark for an integrated innovation platform ecosystem.
Leveraging the "Mengkeju" platform as a key innovation-driven platform, Inner Mongolia is building an integrated platform for industry-university-research collaboration and the promotion and commercialization of sci-tech achievements, facilitating deeper connections between innovation and capital, as well as between technology and the market.

The platform, a flagship initiative under Inner Mongolia's innovation-driven development strategy, has established a comprehensive innovation network integrating scientific research and development, capital operation, project incubation, technology commercialization and intellectual property protection.

Since its launch in 2023, the platform, with more than 20,000 registered users, has recorded over 1.48 million website visits. It has hosted 196 technology release and matchmaking events, published 1,287 technology achievements and market demands, facilitated technology commercialization transactions worth 923 million yuan ($136.28 million), and helped science and technology enterprises secure nearly 7.55 billion yuan in financing.

The platform is now further strengthening its role as a hub for industry-university-research collaboration and technology commercialization by promoting closer integration between research outcomes and investment, and between technological innovation and market demand.

Efforts are underway to cultivate a group of professional technology transfer organizations and dedicated commercialization teams to improve the success rate of technology transfer. Meanwhile, the region is implementing post-transaction subsidies for technology trading, pioneering innovative cooperation models such as equity investment through computing power and data dividend sharing, establishing a risk compensation fund, and encouraging financial institutions to provide dedicated credit support for pilot-scale testing and artificial intelligence research and development projects.

Using capital as the key link, the local authorities must support the establishment of a number of independently operated, market-oriented new R&D institutions to break down institutional barriers among innovation actors and promote the evolution of industry-university-research collaboration from loose cooperation to deep integration.

Focusing on the region's strategic sectors such as new energy, new materials, and modern agriculture and animal husbandry, they should jointly develop technology road maps to create a seamless innovation chain spanning technological breakthroughs, commercialization of research outcomes and industrial application.

The ultimate goal of high-quality commercialization of sci-tech achievements is to foster new high-quality productive forces. This does not mean starting from scratch or abandoning existing productive capacity. Rather, it requires adhering to the principle of putting industry first, advancing development in light of local conditions and transforming resource endowments into innovation strengths while upgrading traditional advantages into systemic competitive advantages.

It is a must to promote the adoption of new commercialization-driven technologies in traditional industries, replacing the fragmented approach of isolated technological upgrades with integrated transformation. In leading sectors such as energy, chemicals and metallurgy, the local authorities must select key industrial parks and flagship enterprises to develop integrated application scenarios that combine data-driven operations, intelligent control and green manufacturing processes.

Meanwhile, they should also accelerate the extension of industrial value chains toward higher value-added segments. It is also necessary to establish a fund to support innovation in the Product-as-a-Service model, a business model where a service is provided in an area traditionally served via the purchase of a product, encouraging traditional enterprises to evolve from pure product suppliers into providers of integrated solutions.

The ferroalloy industry in Ulaanqab offers a compelling example. By deploying the world's first large-capacity fully enclosed direct current submerged arc furnace, enterprises have reduced electricity consumption by 15 percent and coke consumption by 10 percent, while enabling more than 30 operators to oversee the entire production process with precision from a centralized intelligent control center.

At the same time, these enterprises are transforming from sellers of ferroalloy products into providers of comprehensive solutions that combine smelting technology packages with remote operation and maintenance services.

Another example is the 1,4-butanediol (BDO) industry in Wuhai. Supported by a technology innovation center, local enterprises have shifted from simply marketing BDO monomers to supplying biodegradable materials together with customized formulation services. They have established a complete industry chain spanning coal, electricity, BDO production and biodegradable plastics, significantly enhancing the cross-industry value creation.

Leveraging sci-tech innovation and the commercialization of research outcomes strengthens the role of the Hohhot-Baotou-Ordos-Ulaanqab urban cluster as the region's innovation hub in strategic sectors while making an extraordinary effort to cultivate a number of emerging industrial clusters.

At the same time, the local authorities must explore an Inner Mongolia-specific development pathway that links sci-tech achievements, start-up enterprises and industrial clusters into an integrated cultivation chain. The authorities should also facilitate the free flow and optimal allocation of innovation resources, and foster a new pattern of strategic emerging industry development characterized by coordinated cross-region planning, differentiated regional strengths and synergistic collaboration.

The author is the vice-president of the Inner Mongolia University of Technology.

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