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Xi'an evolving into a hub for high-quality development and business innovation

By Wang Jinhui | China Daily | Updated: 2019-06-28 07:30

To stimulate market players' vitality, social creativity and economic growth, Xi'an, capital of Shaanxi province, has exerted great efforts to boost advancement in mass entrepreneurship and innovation, or shuangchuang, amid the tide of the nation's plan to drive high-quality development.

Local officials said the city is becoming a hotbed for shuangchuan and catching the world's attention for its state-of-the-art technologies, strong scientific research strength, talented people and favorable policies.

Gao Gao, vice-mayor of Xi'an, said the city will play a leading role in launching various activities to accelerate mass entrepreneurship and innovation.

As a key part of the city's shuangchuang week kicked off from June 13, the Xi'an International Entrepreneurship Conference and World INS Conference in 2019 held recently is was viewed as a grand gathering for startups and industrial leaders with international vision and frontier technologies. It also helps Xi'an to advance its mass entrepreneurship and innovation to a deeper level.

Themed with "culture links technology, innovation powers Xi'an", the event was aimed at pushing forward globalization, innovation in culture and technology and multi-tiered and wide-ranging exchanges and cooperation.

The conference served as a face-to-face platform for pioneers and professionals, focusing on frontier industries like artificial intelligence, smart communication, digital creative intelligence, video clips and cultural tourism integration.

It includes four main activities - the 2019 Xi'an International Entrepreneurship Conference, the Belt and Road forum on science and technology parks, the 2019 World INS Conference and the 2019 Xi'an International Entrepreneurship Carnival.

Wang Dong, deputy executive director of the Institute for China-US People-to-People Exchange, said during the event the dramatic change of internet technology will help to mitigate disadvantages brought by globalization and build a more balanced and inclusive process of reglobalization.

Alvaro Montoya, co-founder and CEO of Akkadu, said intelligent communication is to combine content with knowledge to improve user experience.

Robust growth

To answer the call for China's plan to encourage mass entrepreneurship and innovation, Xi'an has implemented an innovation-driven strategy on planning and constructing mass carriers, creating good business environment and offering favorable policies.

The number of entities and individuals involved in innovation and entrepreneurship in the city is growing rapidly.

Xi'an evolving into a hub for high-quality development and business innovation

In 2018, the newly added market entities in the sector reached 550,000, up 91.7 percent year-on-year. To speed up the industrialization of scientific and technological achievements, Xi'an is encouraging staff at universities and research institutes to start their own undertakings by launching high-end projects.

For example, the Xi'an Institute of Optics and Precision Mechanics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has formed an advanced model of "talented people, technologies, assets and services", which focuses on the industrialization of scientific and technological achievements. The institute also builds a whole chain incubation system of industrial bases, including makerspaces, startups, incubators and boosters.

It has cultivated 284 hardcore technology enterprises with total market value of 41.7 billion yuan ($6 billion) and helped add new employment opportunities for 7,000 people.

Xi'an has spent some 30 million yuan to construct entrepreneurship and innovation bases at universities. The first batch of universities include Xi'an Jiaotong University, Northwestern Polytechnical University and Xidian University.

The city is also aiming to attract more high-end talent to initiate mass entrepreneurship and innovation. Xi'an has launched a series of talent recruitment projects like the Global Top Scientists and Innovation Team Program and Dreaming Back to Chang'an - The Return of Millions of Alumni.

To introduce more overseas talent, the city has set up talent workstations, high-tech incubators, liaison stations across the globe and tried hard to create a national-level innovation platform for professionals.

Expanding influence

Xi'an is intended to be a metropolis for entrepreneurship and innovation, offering financial support, holding activities and improving the professionalism of innovation bases under China's Belt and Road Initiative and the 20th anniversary of the country's development plan in western areas.

The city has set up a venture capital fund of 3 billion yuan to support entrepreneurship and innovation and a fund for the industrialization of technological achievements.

Xi'an has also offered subsidies, or "innovation vouchers" to spur technological innovation and employment.

The city has set up 500 million yuan bonus to support startups to participate in training, financing and social networking.

To date, Xi'an's policy has helped guarantee platforms on financing to offer more than 50 billion yuan and services to some 7000 small and medium-sized enterprises.

The newly added sales revenue of enterprises hit 118.2 billion yuan through direct or indirect guarantee services.

The city has vigorously carried out entrepreneurship activities such as the Xi'an International Entrepreneurship Conference and angel investment seminars. Since 2017, Xi'an has launched more than 4,500 face-to-face community activities on entrepreneurship training, experience sharing and the road shows of projects.

By the end of April, Xi'an had established 255 incubators and maker-spaces for high-tech enterprises. The mass entrepreneurship and innovation carriers in Xi'an have attracted 43,000 companies and teams, creating more than 430,000 job opportunities.

wangjinhui@chinadaily.com.cn

Xi'an evolving into a hub for high-quality development and business innovation 

Participants take a group photo at the Xi'an International Entrepreneurship Conference and World INS Conference in 2019, a grand gathering for startups and industrial leaders.Photos Provided To China Daily

 Xi'an evolving into a hub for high-quality development and business innovation

Industrial leaders share their opinions about the new business opportunities in the next three years during the event.

(China Daily 06/28/2019 page11)

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