Looking beyond traditional strengths

The province has been a leading manufacturing base, but it is also developing modern, high-tech industries

Editor's note: As the People's Republic of China prepares to celebrate its 70th anniversary on Oct 1, China Daily is featuring a series of stories on the role regions have played in the country's development and where they are today.

Jiangsu manufacturing industry has ranked first in the country for eight consecutive years, but the province has been introducing modern technologies to promote growth and upgrade industry.

The province, with a population of 80.5 million, covers an area of 107,200 square kilometers and its GDP reached 9.259 trillion yuan ($1.29 trillion) last year. Three of its 13 cities had GDPs surpassing 1 trillion yuan.

Lou Qinjian, Party secretary of the province, has said on many occasions that the manufacturing industry is the lifeblood of Jiangsu's economy and the foundation for the steady development of a modern economic system.

Last year, the main business income of major industrial enterprises in Jiangsu, those with annual income exceeding 20 million yuan, accounted for 12.5 percent of the total for China's major industrial enterprises.

Wang Qin, director of the Jiangsu Science and Technology Department, said by the end of last year, the province had more than 18,000 high-tech enterprises.

"Innovation, key technologies and talent cultivation have become key words of Jiangsu's development," Wang said.

"We focus on the research of advanced technologies and have listed many industries in the province's 100 key projects in 2019, such as artificial intelligence, future networks and graphene research."

Graphene is a single layer of hybridized carbon atoms ideal for flexible electronics.

The Jiangsu Industrial Technology Research Institute, a scientific research organization approved by the provincial government, hired 32 project managers globally and established six new professional research institutes last year.

"In the same year, more than 1,500 technology transactions were made at the Jiangsu Proprietary Technology Exchange Center," Wang said. "The turnover of the registered technology transaction contracts exceeded 100 billion yuan."

Han Dongming, deputy director of the publicity information office at the Industrial and Information Technology Department of Jiangsu, said the province's manufacturing industry covers 31 categories that can be further divided into 535 subcategories.

"The province has formed a complete industrial chain," Han said.

"High-tech enterprises now account for 42.7 percent of the province's overall industrial enterprises above designated size, while the traditional high-energy consuming industries, such as chemicals, thermal and metallurgical industries, only account for 30.4 percent."

Han added that Jiangsu has 13,000 high-tech companies and 2,392 technology research centers at provincial level and above.

A vaccine engineering center in Taizhou has been researching three types of vaccines to treat the human papillomavirus, with two starting clinical trails. The vaccines are expected to be on the market in two to three years.

Wang Suodong, deputy director of the Development and Reform Commission of the Taizhou Medical High-tech Area, said that more than 1,000 domestic and foreign medical companies have established themselves in the city to take advantage of its medical technologies and high-tech platforms.

"The output value of biomedicine and high-tech medical equipment has reached 110.4 billion yuan," he said. "That tops the 13 cities in Jiangsu and all the prefecture-level cities in China."

Han, from the information technology department, said the province had many manufacturing industry leaders.

"A total of 1,282 enterprises were newly listed as national-level high-tech enterprises last year," Han said. "In the same year, the value of the province's export of high-tech products exceeded 1 trillion yuan."

He added that the province will focus on innovation to upgrade the manufacturing industry, and strive to develop modern industries including information technology, nanotechnology applications and artificial intelligence.

Guo Jun contributed to this story.

cangwei@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily Global 08/29/2019 page5)