Promising start to the year as enterprises report growth
Revenue of Beijing’s 10 industrial clusters each exceeds 100 billion yuan
In the first quarter, which is regarded as a sign of the economy for the year ahead, Beijing has made a good start in industrial development. Official statistics show strong momentum and vitality.
The year 2024 is key to accomplishing the major targets and tasks of the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25), said Jiang Guangzhi, director of the Beijing Bureau of Economy and Information Technology.
According to the city government, the growth rate of industrial added value of enterprises above designated size is expected to be around 5 percent on a yearly basis, which is higher than the national target for the first time in the past decade.
Beijing, which leads the country in highlighting the development of high-tech, specialized and sophisticated industries, has achieved remarkable progress in the sector.
The revenue of the city’s 10 hightech, specialized and sophisticated industrial clusters has each exceeded 100 billion yuan ($13.9 billion), becoming “ballast stones” for financial stability and steady economic growth in the Chinese capital, Jiang said.
Among these industrial clusters, the scale of new-generation information technology, serving as one of the pillar industries in Beijing, has reached more than 3 trillion yuan, and the scale of intelligent equipment has exceeded 500 billion yuan.
Moreover, the city will strengthen the overall planning of key projects and promote the implementation of a number of major projects such as Li Auto and Xiaomi EV, Jiang added.
This year, new quality productive forces became a buzzword during the two sessions earlier this month. Jiang said the key for Beijing to foster new quality productive forces lies in the transformation of sci-tech innovation into industrial advantages.
It requires deepening the integration of innovation chains and industry chains, and to shape new drivers for economic growth, he added.
The city should better develop the advantages of the digital economy and accelerate steps to push forward the construction of data infrastructure.
“Making good use of digital technology is the most favorable condition for us to develop new quality productive forces,” Jiang said.
“We should pay special attention to the development of enterprises in such fields as integrated circuit instruments and sensors, ultrahigh definition videos, computing power chips, high-performance servers and optical communications, and encourage and support them to speed up technological innovation and the application of localized products,” he added.
Also, more efforts should be made to accelerate the cultivation of future industries, which cover 20 subdivided sectors in six fields like future information, future energy, future materials and future space.
The promotion of more targeted policy measures is another approach to nurturing new quality productive forces. Special industrial policies for general artificial intelligence, 6G, metaverse, humanoid robots, hydrogen energy and new energy storage should be implemented, Jiang said.
Over the past decade, Beijing has reallocated non-capital functions as an opportunity to boost the development of Tianjin and Hebei province. Currently, the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region has implemented coordinated development in an all-around way, and plans to build itself into a powerhouse serving the country’s high-quality growth.
The region is making progress in industrial upgrading by developing six industry chains and five industrial clusters, as well as working on the cultivation of world-class manufacturing clusters and a batch of high-quality modern industrial parks and demonstration zones.
The six industry chains include hydrogen energy, biomedicine, robots, new energy vehicles and intelligent connected vehicles. Meanwhile, the five industrial clusters refer to integrated circuits, cybersecurity, biomedicine, electrical equipment, and safety and emergency equipment.
"Making good use of digital technology is the most favorable condition for us to develop new quality productive forces.”
Jiang Guangzhi, director of the Beijing Bureau of Economy and Information Technology