Shanghai shining on tech stage

Shanghai's continued efforts to improve its business environment are conducive to creating a vibrant ecosystem for technological innovation, which serves as a key growth engine for the city's high-quality economic development, said officials and company executives.

Their comments were made following the new action plan that the municipal government rolled out on Jan 4 to improve the city's business environment with 26 detailed measures. With the 9.0 version being in place this year — after the action plan was first rolled out in 2018 — the latest edition aims for progress in governmental services, market competition, industrial ecosystem and social co-governance.

Gu Jun, director of the Shanghai Municipal Development and Reform Commission, said during a news conference on Thursday that this year's action plan has, for the first time, raised the target of building an ecosystem adaptable to the development of various industries.

By using industrial parks and buildings more efficiently, resources will be made more accessible to key industries so that more innovation results and startups can be nurtured amid a more dynamic entrepreneurial environment, Gu said.

Industrial parks will be supported to build concept validation platforms, professional incubators and pilot testing platforms. Industry leaders and companies along the same industrial chain are encouraged to build platforms to facilitate regular communication and exchange of ideas, according to the latest action plan.

Wu Jincheng, government head of Pudong New Area, said the competitiveness in the ecosystem is of significant appeal to companies. The total value of the three emerging industries of integrated circuits, biomedicine and artificial intelligence in Pudong accounted for 45 percent of Shanghai's total last year. Companies along the industrial chain may be found within the same building or among their neighbors, Wu said.

Chen Weiliang, founder of domestic graphics processing unit giant MetaX, said, "With the computing foundation built in Pudong, companies of our kind can, in turn, facilitate the development of more industries."

Tao Changsheng, deputy director of the Shanghai Municipal Financial Regulatory Bureau, said that Shanghai will also step up its support for equity financing, especially among technologically advanced small and medium-sized enterprises.

Zhou Xiaoyan, deputy director of the general office of the municipal government, said that Shanghai will further streamline the process of directly obtaining policy support without application in advance.

The city's technology innovation coupons — special municipal-level fiscal support for tech — have been included in this innovative measure since August, benefiting more than 30,000 enterprises, she said.

shijing@chinadaily.com.cn