Beijing's promotion of industries engaged in cutting-edge fields pays off in dividends

Having topped academic publisher Nature's ranking of global science cities three years in a row, Beijing is consolidating its position as an open and international center of scientific and technological innovation.

China's capital city boasts many advantages in cutting-edge areas of development because of its early forays into them over the past five years, according to Yang Renquan, deputy director of the Beijing Science and Technology Commission.

"The 13th Five-Year Plan period (2016-20) was a period for Beijing to accelerate the pace of building itself into a science and technology center," Yang said. "Over the past five years, we have insisted on strengthening fundamental research and advancing research on core technologies by targeting global science frontiers.

"That helped the city improve its comprehensive strengths in scientific and technological innovation," he said.

During the past five years, the proportion of the annual investment in research and development in terms of the city's GDP has been maintained at 6 percent, surpassing international peers such as New York and Berlin; and 15.9 percent of the R&D expenditure went to fundamental research in 2019, a considerable increase from 13.8 percent in 2015.

Focusing on economic growth, Beijing has spared no effort to develop high-tech and other advanced industries in a bid to bring about high-quality development.

Local authorities have introduced policies aiding the development of high-tech industries such as new-generation information, medical healthcare, new materials and artificial intelligence over the past five years, Yang said.

In 2019, the output value of AI-related industries in Beijing was 170 billion yuan ($26.25 billion), 2.4 times that of 2015; the output volume of the healthcare industry topped 200 billion yuan, maintaining double-digit growth for the fourth consecutive year.

The capital has also launched 60 major projects for tech application scenarios, with a total investment of 19.6 billion yuan.

In 2019, the added value of the high-tech industry in Beijing accounted for 25 percent of the city's GDP. Zhongguancun Science Park in the city generated 6.6 trillion yuan in business revenue that year, 1.63 times that of 2015. The science park has maintained a more than 10 percent annual growth over the past five years.

"We have insisted on reforming institutions for science and technology ... to give full play to Zhongguancun Science Park's role as a pilot for reform and opening-up and to develop more policies that can be replicated and scaled across the country," Yang said.

During the 13th Five-Year Plan, Zhongguancun Science Park increased efforts to implement an innovation-driven strategy and provided strong support for the capital to become an international technology and science center, said Zhu Jianhong, deputy director of the park.

In 2019, companies at the park spent 340 billion yuan on R&D, nearly twice that of the figure at the end of the 12th Five-Year Plan period (2011-15). The 2019 figure accounted for 5.1 percent of the park's total revenue.

In the same year, the number of newly established high-tech companies in the park reached 27,000, an increase of 33 percent from 2015, according to Zhu.

"Through deepening the reform of pilot trials, the park's role as a model and a leading force has been further enhanced," Zhu said.

As an innovation and entrepreneurial base for overseas talents, the park has issued more than 30 preferential policies to attract professionals from across the globe.

According to Zhu, the time for dealing with foreigners' application for work permits has shortened from 180 to 50 workdays. By the end of 2019, there were more than 53,000 overseas Chinese returnees and expatriates working in the park. It has established 19 overseas offices and welcomed more than 300 multinational companies to set up their headquarters and R&D centers.

From January to October in 2020, the total revenue of businesses in the park was 5.3 trillion yuan, up 11.2 percent year-on-year despite the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

During the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-25), Beijing will focus on digital economic development and continue to utilize the advantages in science and technology and talents, and to explore a new road on the development of scientific and technological innovation, Yang said.

The city plans to make more breakthroughs in monopolized technologies, promote the integrated development of Zhongguancun Science City, Huairou Science City, Future Science City and the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area, and to build Beijing into a global digital economy benchmark city in the next five years, according to Yang.

Visitors watch a robot pick up a pack of tissues at the China Beijing International High-tech Expo in 2020. JU HUANZONG/XINHUA

An employee at Zhongguancun Science City in Beijing demonstrates how an urban brain system analyzes Haidian district's environmental data. REN CHAO/XINHUA

A woman learns about Beijing's intelligent subway plan at an expo in 2020. CHEN XIAOGEN/FOR CHINA DAILY