Guideline lays out clear development direction for growth

The Beijing city government will continue providing resources and beneficial policies to spur innovation during the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-25), following through on the commitment to becoming an international center for scientific and technological innovation, according to the latest official release.

On Nov 24, the city government unveiled a guideline making it clear that by 2025, Beijing should achieve the goal of building itself into an international scientific and technological innovation center.

Officials pointed to Zhongguancun Science City, Huairou Science City, Future Science Park and Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area as being key in achieving the goal.

The guideline puts great emphasis on the role of independent research and development, adding that innovation remains of great significance and is a key strategic factor supporting the capital's high-quality development.

The guideline also proposes that innovation should also be encouraged in the institutional mechanism and working formats of governmental bodies, which can act as a driving force to boost the interdisciplinary cooperation.

City officials have emphasized the role of Zhongguancun Science City as a showpiece of reform and for it to continue to lead and develop in that area. The government said it will continue to improve its administrative services for many high-tech enterprises in Zhongguancun.

Officials noted that apart from Beijing becoming an international center for scientific and technological innovation, the city's main strategies are all interconnected. The other strategies are the development of the "two zones"－the Integrated National Demonstration Zone for Opening Up the Services Sector and the China (Beijing) Pilot Free Trade Zone; becoming the benchmark city for global digital economy; supply-side structural reform; and the coordinated development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region.

Those major strategies should be regarded as a whole and be implemented in a coordinated way, in a bid to generate a stronger force to drive innovation, the guideline said.

By 2025, the R&D expenditure of Beijing should be kept at an estimated 6 percent of the GDP of the city, with frequent technological breakthroughs and new discoveries in hard sciences.

In some cutting-edge fields such as artificial intelligence and a number of bottleneck technologies, a handful of leading tech enterprises with global influence should be cultivated.

New achievements should be made in the creation of working mechanisms. After that, the environment for innovation and entrepreneurship will be optimized, the ability to allocate resources internationally will be enhanced, cooperation among industrial players will be smoother and international exchanges will be strengthened in an all-around way, the guideline said.

Thereafter, the scientific quality of the whole society will be significantly improved, with obstacles restricting scientific and technological innovation further being removed.

The 14th Five-Year Plan period is the first five years for China to embark on a new journey of building a modern socialist country in an all-around way, and a step toward the second centennial goal, said Xu Qiang, head of the Beijing Science and Technology Commission.

After the rapid development during the 13th Five-Year Plan period (2016-20), the ability for innovation in Beijing has improved remarkably. R&D expenditure accounts for 6.3 percent of the city's GDP, there are 144 invention patents per 10,000 people and turnover of technology-driven contracts has reached 630 billion yuan ($98.6 billion).

To date, the revenue of Beijing's high-tech industry accounts for 31.6 percent of the city's GDP, Xu said, adding that a series of breakthroughs are being made in some core technologies such as AI, super-scale training models and blockchain, medical research and research on superconducting quantum chips.

The guideline, published by the administrative office of the Beijing science and technology innovation center, is a policy guarantee from the aspects of organization, policy, real circumstances and practical implementation, Xu said.

It is a collaborative plan providing working mechanisms, monitoring and evaluation methods, and has a dynamic adjustment mechanism to guide future work, Xu said, adding the next years will see the implementation of the guideline in an all-around way with the participation of all stakeholders in the city.