Taiyuan, capital of North China's Shanxi province, recently released its plan for scientific and technological innovation in the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-25) – to take the lead in establishing a first-class innovation system in the province.
Cultivating innovators
Under the plan, the city will focus on incubating and introducing a group of tech-based enterprises with independent core technologies. By 2025, the number of the city's high-tech enterprises is expected to reach 4,500 and 100 leading technology enterprises will be developed.
The city will organize top domestic and foreign sci-tech teams and organizations to jointly tackle strategic and core technical problems. It will support enterprises in overcoming a number of key technology development bottlenecks, leading to major scientific and technological achievements and the establishment of a number of technical standards.
Pilot test bases, projects and pilot test services – jointly being constructed by businesses, universities and scientific research institutes – will receive targeted support from municipal authorities. By 2025, the city will build pilot test bases covering strategic emerging industrial clusters – including semiconductors, carbon-based new materials and intelligent manufacturing of coal machinery.
Taiyuan will also support small, medium and micro-sized enterprises to purchase technology services from universities, included in the scope of the provincial-university cooperation map. It will support regional branches of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Zhongguancun Science Park, as well as national innovation platforms.
Creating innovation platforms
Taiyuan plans to make efforts to introduce a national IT innovation applications center, a national technology innovation center for carbon fiber and composite materials – as well as the large-scale, ground-based installation of a gravitational wave detection system based on quantum light sources.
The city will build national key laboratories for dynamic testing technology, silicon carbide semiconductor materials, intelligent coal mining technology and intelligent equipment.
It will support leading and backbone enterprises in cooperating with domestic and foreign universities and research institutes, as well as plan the establishment of provincial labs with high standards.
In addition, it will introduce technological innovation talent and incubate high-tech enterprises, with the aim of developing 350 new R&D institutions during the period.
Transforming tech innovation achievements
Furthermore, Taiyuan will set up a 2-billion-yuan ($315.04 million) fund, which will support a number of high-tech achievement applications and transformation projects, by means of equity investment. These will be in the fields of IT application innovation, semiconductors, big data and intelligent manufacturing of coal machinery.
It will support tech enterprises in obtaining loans from financial institutions through intellectual property, or IP pledges. Moreover, it will encourage insurance institutions to increase support for independent brands and independent IP by introducing a range of technical equipment insurance, product development liability insurance and guarantee insurance.
Also, the city will build a sci-tech financial demonstration center, to provide special financial services for small and medium-sized technology-based enterprises.