Haidian mulls ways to finance future tech

A glance at the Haidian Science Park. The park is expected to become a world-class high-tech center with international influence by the end of 2015. Liu Peien / for China Daily

 

Among the thousands of industrial parks across the nation, the Zhongguancun Haidian Science Park in Beijing stands out for its innovative concepts and the development of emerging industries, said Meng Jingwei, deputy director of Haidian district.

As a national innovation demonstration zone, the Haidian Science Park is expected to become a world-class high-tech center with international influence by the end of the 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-15).

Meng said that the park would "first of all, become a distribution center for innovative ideas, where more and more innovative business models and organizations will come out."

"Also, it will be a base for the development of strategic emerging industries," he said. "Haidian is playing a leading role in the development of the seven national strategic emerging industries, such as navigation services and next-generation Internet."

The service sector today contributes nearly 90 percent of the district's GDP, and the technological services industry is a highlight of that sector.

Meng said technological services are "like a binder that glues together innovative ideas, investment, talent, markets and other elements".

"Universities and institutes may only pay attention to technical research, while companies focus more on production, and talented people may have problems finding capital and places to start businesses," he explained.

"The technological service industry actually integrates the advantages of all those elements." He said the industry is like a catalyst because "it does not simply combine different elements together but leads to higher efficiency and generates new models of organization".

Innovative financing

Nearly 90 percent of the companies in Haidian are small or start-ups. Traditional financing methods are ill adapted to this situation because most of those companies are rich in ideas and creativity but lack substantial assets to use as collateral.

So, the local government has made policies to encourage financial institutions to develop new services, such as intellectual property mortgages, credit loans, petty loans and government subsidies.

With eight petty loan companies, Haidian leads all districts in Beijing.

Other policies are to attract banks to establish high-level branches in the science park. The Bank of Beijing and China Construction Bank have opened Zhongguancun subsidiaries, and many other banks have set up special offices for small and medium-sized companies.

In addition to financing problems, another difficulty is information asymmetry. "Actually there are already a number of innovative financial products, but companies might not know it because they focus too much on their own marketing," he explained.

Now a comprehensive financing service platform has been built on which all products of the financing institutions as well as the needs of the companies are presented online. Analysts will help companies seek financial aid and choose proper products and solutions more efficiently.

On top of assistance from banks and the local government, many other forms of financing, including venture capital and private equity institutions, have also been encouraged in Haidian to "serve the integration of capital, technology and the market", said Meng.

In the district, there are currently nearly 500 equity investment organizations looking for projects to fund. These groups together manage total capital worth almost 200 billion yuan .

"The history of those advanced countries has proven that the power of capital and financial markets is the ultimate force in each successful technological revolution," said Meng.

Future programs

"The technical financing industry is mainly about building a stage and integrating resources," said the deputy mayor.

A number of plans will be carried out in the next few years to promote the technical financing service industry in Haidian. The district has implemented a project aimed at developing young talent in the field of technological financing, thereby expanding the scale of that industry.

Another plan is to promote international exchanges. The local authorities and companies will be able to interact with leading overseas high-tech zones, such as Silicon Valley.

Guided by this plan, more than 20 international technology trading centers have been founded in the district to introduce state-of-the-art technology and concepts to Haidian while exporting leading domestically developed technology abroad.

A third project seeks to introduce world-class technology conferences and forums, which are expected to bring in cutting-edge ideas and transform them into products.

This project is actually under way, and the Global Mobile Internet Conference is an example of it in action.

Also, the government will rely on many industrial alliances to commercialize the emerging technologies, such as cloud computing, satellite navigation services, biomedicine and next-generation Internet.

zhangzhao@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 09/12/2012 page12)