International cooperation key to supporting industrial upgrade
Chengdu is continuing to use the international cooperation model embodied by its science city as it looks to push its industrial upgrading and support technological innovation.
A Sino-German innovative industrial cooperation park, covering a total area of 22 square kilometers, is currently under construction in Chengdu Science City, a hub of technology, business and industry in the city’s Tianfu New Area.
Liu Yutong, director of the investment services bureau at the Chengdu Administrative Committee of the Tianfu New Area, said the park will be the main platform for Chengdu to conduct innovative cooperation with Germany.
The park is expected to promote the integrated development of Germany’s Industry 4.0 Strategy, which seeks greater automation and data exchange in manufacturing to create a “smart factory”, and Made in China 2025, a 10-year national plan to transform China from a manufacturing giant into a global high-tech production powerhouse.
Liu said the park has planned 10 industrial areas, covering fields such as scientific research, healthcare services, intelligent manufacturing and international trade.
At the park’s inauguration ceremony last November, six companies signed cooperation agreements with Tianfu New Area and its investor, Chengdu Tianfu New Area Investment Group. The agreements led to investment totaling 4 billion yuan ($581.8 million).
An industrial fund of 5 billion yuan was also established to provide financial support to German companies that invest in Chengdu.
The German state of North Rhine-Westphalia is building a North Rhine-Westphalia Center, which is set to be one of the park’s largest projects.
With total investment of 2 billion yuan, the NRW Center will become the headquarters for German enterprises in western China and serve as a major platform for economic and cultural exchanges between Germany and western China.
Next to the NRW Center is the site of the Sichuan-France Ecological and Technological Park. A joint project of the French region of Champagne-Ardenne and Sichuan province, the park will focus on architecture, urban planning and the energy efficiency of buildings.
The science city is also expanding cooperation with several of the world’s leading universities, including Cambridge, Oxford and Stanford.
In May 2016, the Tianfu New Area signed an agreement with Stanford Research Institute International to establish an innovation institute. The agreement led to the founding of the Tianfu Innovation Institute by senior executives from SRI, Silicon Valley and Chengdu Technology Transfer Group. It is the first substantial cooperation project that SRI has undertaken in China.
“We will build a bridge between Chengdu and Silicon Valley,” said Huang Yannong, co-founder and CEO of the Tianfu Innovation Institute.
The institute aims to incubate teams that have business models centered around new technology. It will then help those teams and their models to realize their full commercial potential, Huang said.
It will also bring in advanced technologies and enterprises from SRI, Silicon Valley and beyond to Chengdu in order to boost the development of high-tech industries in the city, he added.