Service station initiative benefits capital’s SMEs
Beijing opened 2024 by establishing its inaugural set of 30 stations dedicated to serving specialized and innovative small and medium-sized enterprises. The project is aimed at bolstering the quantity and revenues of leading players in niche markets, targeting double-digit growth.
China’s capital city now has 7,180 such companies, which earned their status by passing a series of evaluations in terms of specialization, refinement, uniqueness, and innovation. They generated an aggregate revenue of around 800 billion yuan ($111.2 billion) in 2023, according to the latest data from Beijing’s economy and information technology bureau.
These companies are expected to surpass 10,000 in quantity and 1 trillion yuan in revenue by the end of 2024, said Yang Jingguo, director of the bureau’s SME department.
The newly-established service stations, projected to number 100 by year’s end, will play a vital role by “providing comprehensive support and services to the enterprises, helping them solve various problems encountered during their development, and empowering them for sustained development and innovation,” Yang noted.
While functioning the same as a bridge for government-enterprise communication, the stations vary in their service provision. For example, the station in the Z-Innoway park technology hub of Zhongguancun prioritizes policy briefings and guidance tailored to specialized and innovative SMEs, so that these companies can quickly find, understand and benefit from policies, said Huang Jingjing, assistant to the general manager of the park. It also builds a shared service platform by improving the online and offline service system to facilitate highquality development of specialized and innovative SMEs, she added.
The station in Haidian Pioneer Park has adopted the “staged incubation” model, a method of systematically nurturing and incubating entrepreneurial ventures in stages to provide personalized enterprise steward services for businesses, while the Chaoyang Technology station is dedicated to building an international entrepreneurial investment cluster, achieving the aggregation of venture capital institutions, venture capital projects, venture capital talents and service agencies.
According to the capital’s economy and information technology bureau, the specialized and innovative SMEs in Beijing are the vanguard of technological innovation and the backbone of industrial advancement.
More than 80 percent of these companies operate within the top 10 high-end industries, and over 60 percent have recorded a revenue growth rate that exceeds 10 percent.
These SMEs also emphasize strong technological innovation, with more than 40 percent allocating more than 15 percent of their expenditure to research and development. Moreover, nearly 70 percent of the enterprises have showcased unique expertise, establishing themselves as complementary entities to leading companies within the industry chain.