The 11^th Guangzhou Municipal Congress of the CPC describes the new blueprint in the future five years: Guangzhou will strength its hub-typed network city functions, consolidate and improve its positions as an important central city of China, increase its capacity in the global resource allocation and play a more important role in the global urban system.

 

How can Guangzhou, while building the international innovation hub, find a benchmark in the global urban system, search impetus in the national strategies and regional development, grasp opportunities in the global development resource allocation and international industrial division and concentrate high-end resources across the globe?

 

On December 27, the 11^th Guangzhou Municipal Congress of the CPC convened the first news conference. At the conference, Zhan Decun, deputy director-general of Guangzhou Science, Technology and Innovation Commission, said that to build an international scientific and technological innovation hub, the first is to set forth the destination and junctures. Guangzhou is working hard to catch up the international innovation highlands such as the Silicon Valley, 128 Boston Road of the United States and Tel Aviv, Israel and try to be an important city of talent, technology and capital exchanges.

 

Guangzhou boasts of four hardware conditions to become an international innovation resource “absorber”

 

In views of Zhan, there must be four hardware conditions to concentrate international innovation resources in accordance with the scientific and technological innovation laws. These four conditions include world-class research institutions, a world leading scientific and technological achievements transfer mechanism, a world leading scientific and technological enterprise incubation and fostering system, and a large batch of world leading large-scale enterprises. “Only with concentration of R&D, transfer and incubation forces and large-scale enterprises can a city be called an international scientific and technological innovation hub.”

 

The Research Institute of Tsinghua, Pearl River Delta (PRD), which was established last year, has established eight R&D centers in only more than half a year. It has attracted scientist teams from the Tsinghua University, Stanford University and other global renowned universities and Academician Wang Guodong at Northeastern University. This year the research institute has established an investment platform and has successfully completed investment in eight high-tech projects with total investment of more than RMB40 million, with more than 20 projects under negotiation and research.

 

“We take the 1+1 R&D mode, and equip each R&D center with an enterprises to make innovation closer to the market”, said Li Qirong, director of the Department of Technological Innovation of the Research Institute of Tsinghua (PRD). With 20 years of development, the Research Institute of Tsinghua University in Shenzhen has successfully incubated more than 1,500 enterprises and more than 20 listed enterprises. Today Guangdong Province has established the Research Institute of Tsinghua (PRD) with Tsinghua University to duplicate and promote the mode of Research Institute of Tsinghua University in Shenzhen.

 

The data show that Guangzhou has 44 provincial-level new type R&D institutions, ranking the first in Guangdong Province in terms of the total number. This year saw more than 900 newly established enterprises R&D institutions.

 

Since last year Guangzhou has vigorously explored the market-oriented scientific and technological results transfer system. Guangzhou enterprises which purchase the technological results can be eligible for subsidies of 5% of the actual technical transaction amount in the technical contracts. The amount of registered technical contracts is predicted to reach RMB28 billion as of December 31. 

 

With increasingly strong innovation and entrepreneurship atmosphere in Guangzhou, Zhu Dongfang, vice president of International Data Group (IDG) China, said the group would establish IDG incubation bases in Guangzhou, Chengdu and Silicon Valley of the United States in the next step.

 

“For startup groups at the inception phase, mastering the global leading information and resources is like standing at the same starting line with the entrepreneurs across the globe.” In the future IDG will match with the incubation groups of Korea, Hong Kong and Europe. It is IDG’s advantages to rapidly set up incubators across the globe and open all resource channels so as to enable the startup groups across the globe to exchange frequently and accelerate transfer of ideas into reality. Zhu said the PRD city agglomeration has become the largest Internet industrial chain of China, featuring relative lower (startup) costs. For example, Shenzhen boasts of smart hardware competitiveness while Guangzhou has more advantages on software development and Internet applications. These two cities are complementary to each other in the industrial chain. 

 

At present, Guangzhou has basically formed a whole-chain incubation service system. It has seen 71 newly established incubators, up 108.8%, increasing the total number to 190. The total incubation area exceeds 8 million square meters, with nearly 10,000 enterprises and projects under incubation.

 

The Guangzhou Municipal Congress of the CPC put forward to promote construction of the national innovation central city, enhance the high-level two-way open innovation, and voluntarily gear into the global innovation system and attract more international innovation resources.

 

In this year, a batch of hub-type and innovation projects, including CISCO, GE, and COSCO, have settled in Guangzhou. Up to now, 288 Fortune 500 corporations have set up 797 projects in Guangzhou. In the first half year alone, 16 projects of Fortune 500 corporations have settled in or signed agreement with Guangzhou, with total investment reaching RMB27.2 billion.

 

The number of Internet enterprises exceeds 3,000, and enterprises features global colors when established

 

The hub-typed network city construction pushes Guangzhou to continuously concentrate global scientific and technological innovation elements, and concentration of the high-end elements such as talents, science and technology, capital and information forms the comparative advantages of Guangzhou in new times.

 

UC Browser born in 2004 is one of the first Apps of China embarking on the internationalization path. Today it has been one of the Top 3 browsers of the world, serves more than 150 countries and regions with more than 100 million overseas users. It has the largest market share in India and Indonesia and other countries with a large population.

 

During the Guangzhou International Innovation Festival, Cao Xiaohuan, co-founder and CFO of Mobvista said at an interview that not only mature enterprises are exploring the overseas markets, the startup businesses aim at the overseas market at the beginning of birth and participate in the global competition.

 

Take Mobvista for example. As the largest mobile digital marketing platform in Asia, Mobvista has established an advertising network with up to 2 billion mobile devices, covering more than 240 countries (regions), and advertising up to 10 billion times a day. At present the company has more than 500 employees across the globe, including more than 200 employees engaging in product development and R&D.

 

The rapid development of Internet industry has improved Guangzhou’s leading role driven by the information economy. As one of the first five “Internet +” towns of Guangdong, Tianhe “Internet” town has attracted a series of industrial leaders, including Netease, UC, Kugou, PCI-Suntek Technology and 9377 Games. Tianhe is working hard to make the town an industrial cluster with annual output above RMB100 billion in the next three years.

 

At 2016 China Internet + Conference held in June in Beijing, the ranking of Top 10 Internet + Construction Model Cities was released, and these cities are Beijing, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Chengdu, Chongqing, Wuhan, Changsha and Fuzhou. Guangzhou ranks the third in the rankings.

 

According to Li Danrong, deputy inspector of the Industry and Information Technology Commission, Guangzhou has more than 3,000 Internet enterprises, with more than 300,000 employees, including more than 200,000 R&D personnel. It has a batch of large-scale data centers such as Asia-Pacific Information Engine and China Telecom Shaxi Cloud Computing Center, with more than 29,000 racks in total. Guangzhou Development District Big Data Industrial Park was one of the first approved provincial-level big data industrial parks.

 

Guangzhou’s industrial structure is extending to the high end of the value chain and the innovation driving force has been obviously enhanced. In 2015, the advanced manufacturing sector generated added value of RMB258.7 billion, accounting for 59.7% of the added value of the manufacturing sector, increased 53.7% compared with that in 2010, up 9.0% on average year-on-year. The industrial structure with the advanced manufacturing as the main body has been basically established. In the first 11 months this year, Guangzhou has achieved total output value of high-tech manufacturing of RMB312.3 billion, up 9.5% year-on-year, 3.2 percentage points higher than the city’s average growth rate.

 

Guangzhou introduces 75 projects with registered capital of more than RMB1 billion

 

In 2016 Guangzhou has continuously enhanced the investment introduction, and a batch of major projects have signed agreements or will settle in, including Fortune 500 corporations, central enterprises and key private enterprises.

 

According to the registration data of the administration for industry and commerce, from January to November, Guangzhou saw registration of 124,000 new enterprises, up 40% year-on-year, and the total registered capital exceeded RMB700 billion, up 37%. These enterprises include 75 large projects (registered capital exceeding RMB1 billion), and 783 medium projects (registered capital varying from RMB 100 million to RMB1 billion).

 

Of the major projects that have settled in or signed agreement, CISCO Smart City, of which the total investment reached RMB20 billion, will become the largest R&D platform of Internet of Things and smart manufacturing operating platform of CISCO out of the United States. COSCO Bulk Carrier Co.Ltd., which boasts of the world’s largest fleet transportation capacity, settled its headquarters in Guangzhou, and Guangzhou’s construction of the international shipping center will be accelerated like a tiger with wings added. GE’s biological industry park project in Guangzhou will lead development of the bio-engineering and pharmaceutical industry of Guangzhou.

 

Lin Guoqiang, deputy director-general of Guangzhou Municipal Commission of Commerce, and member of the Party Leading Group, said Guangzhou will make the building of an international trade and commercial center as the general objective, and actively transfer the business development mode, accelerate construction of the international trading center, international consumption city, international convention and exhibition center, domestic and foreign trade innovation development city and international capital concentration highland, promote Guangzhou’s transfer from “a big trade city” to “a trade power” and from a participant in the low- and medium-end of the value chain to the innovation leader of the global high-end elements allocation.

 

Building an “Aerial Silk Road” starting from Guangzhou

 

At the meeting, He Donghai, deputy director of Guangzhou Municipal Commission of Transport, said in the recent five years, Guangzhou-Heyuan Expressway, Guangzhou-Shenzhen Riverine Expressway, Zengcheng-Conghua Expressway, Zhaoqing-Huadu Expressway, Guangzhou-Lechang Expressway, Daqing-Guangzhou Expressway, Guangzhou Section of Guangzhou-Gaoming Expressway have been completed and put into service, and the newly completed expressway mileage reached 313km, increasing the total completed expressway mileage to 972km in total. Currently the expressway under construction reaches 200km, further promoting interconnection of Guangzhou with the road network of neighboring cities.

 

He said during the 13^th Five-Year Plan period, Guangzhou will build the “Aerial Silk Road” with Guangzhou as the starting point, and vigorously expand the aviation service scope. It will comprehensively implement the three-year action plan of Guangzhou international shipping center, improve Guangzhou Port’s position in the global shipping system and its resource allocation capacity, accelerate improvement of the shipping logistics, trade and service information platform construction. Meanwhile, Guangzhou has taken measures to consolidate its position as one of the four railway hubs of China and the inter-city rail trunk center, enhance contacts with the neighboring cities and east, west and north Guangdong to increase accessibility of major areas. Guangzhou will build a modern transit metropolis, carry out the new round of metro line planning and application works, optimize the public transport routes, form multi-layer public transport routes of “trunk roads - transshiping routes- micro-circulation routes” to improve the quality services of public transport.

 

Source: Translated from Invest Guangzhou, December 28, 2016