Science and technology corridor to future
In the heart of the Yangtze River Delta, a powerful force of innovation and collaboration is reshaping China's technological landscape.
The incredible journey and breathtaking achievements of the G60 Science and Technology Innovation Corridor have accomplished over the past seven years, where groundbreaking discoveries, visionary minds and a united vision for the future have come together to create a remarkable epicenter of progress.
The nine cities that are included in the corridor, representing just one-24th of China's population and one-120th of its land area, have contributed a remarkable one-15th of the nation's GDP, one-eighth of high-tech enterprises, and one-fifth of companies listed on the sci-tech innovation board, known as the STAR Market.
The nine cities along the G60 corridor include Shanghai, Suzhou, Hangzhou, Jiaxing, Huzhou, Wuhu, Xuancheng, Jinhua and Hefei.
From 2016 to the present, the corridor has focused on advanced manufacturing industry clusters.
A night view of the G60 Science and Technology Innovation Corridor in Songjiang
A magnet for SMEs
It has incubated and attracted a number of "specialized and innovative" small and medium-sized enterprises.
Currently, there are more than 100 companies listed on the STAR Market, along the G60 sci-tech corridor. Additionally, there are 44,200 high-tech enterprises, approximately one-eighth of the national count.
Songjiang's "G60 Starlink" project successfully placed two multimedia beta test A/B satellites named "Songjiang" and "G60" into their designated orbits, etching the presence of the G60 sci-tech corridor in the vast cosmos.
Starpower Semi-conductor in Jiaxing, Zhejiang Province, introduced the automotive-grade IGBT chip, considered a representative product of the third revolution in power electronics technology that breaks foreign monopolies.
Zhengcheng Technology, headquartered in Hangzhou of Zhejiang Province, leverages BeiDou satellite technology for location reporting and short message communication.
This enables the provision of essential emergency communication services in areas with limited signal coverage, ensuring uninterrupted real-time navigation and communication capabilities.
Hengtong Group in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, holds core technology in the marine optical fiber communication full industry chain, providing solutions for submarine optical fiber communication systems in more than 70 countries and regions.
LandSpace in Huzhou, Zhejiang, is a leading domestic aerospace transportation system creator and operator.
Its independently developed Zhuque II series carrier rocket marks China's first liquid oxygen methane carrier rocket.
Jingrui New Materials in Xuancheng, Anhui Province, has developed JR05 photocatalyst, a highly active nano titanium dioxide, which generates strong oxidative substances under light exposure, decomposing organic and some inorganic compounds, bacteria and viruses.
Huadong Optoelectronics in Wuhu, also in Anhui, supplies a wide range of high-tech products for more than 200 key projects and equipment including the Shenzhou spacecraft and the Tiangong series.
Hefei's iFlytek is a renowned intelligent speech and artificial intelligence enterprise in the Asia-Pacific region. Its "iFlytek Super Brain 2030" plan is advancing the capabilities of artificial intelligence to learn, and evolve, enabling robots to enter households.
These remarkable initiatives and pioneering efforts in technology and industry are increasingly capturing the world's attention, with international media highlighting the G60 sci-tech corridor as "China's Silicon Valley," "a vital frontier in global technological innovation" and "a key driver of global sci-tech development."
G60 Science & Technology Innovation Valley of Yangtze River Delta Planning Exhibition Hall
'China's Silicon Valley'
Take Jiaxing for example. Leveraging the collaborative mechanism of the G60 sci-tech corridor, the city in Zhejiang is utilizing all of its resources to build an innovative axis within the corridor.
It is actively constructing several iconic collaborative innovation "sci-tech lake districts," including Xiangjiadang High-level Sci-tech Lake District, Xiangfudang Sci-tech Green Valley, Tian'e Lake Future Science City, and Juanhu International Science and Technology City.
These efforts aim to build a collaborative innovation platform system that showcases complementary assets, resource sharing and chain connections of the nine cities.
One city and three provinces are working hand in hand.
The G60 sci-tech corridor in Songjiang is building an industrial alliance system with the core focus on advanced manufacturing industries.
This system is known as "1 industrial park, 7 industries and N individual local advantage," with 16 industry alliances having been established so far, consisting of a total of 2,455 members in the industries such as integrated circuits, biomedicine, AI, high-end equipment, new energy, new materials and new energy vehicles.
One of the alliances that joined the G60 is Intelligent Driving Industry Alliance established in Suzhou in 2019. It has completed the construction of 79 kilometers of Intelligent Networked Vehicle Roadway (phase III) and 38,000 square meters of Intelligent Driving Maintenance Port II.
Latest technologies and products are showcased at the G60 sci-tech corridor's exhibition hall.
Building industrial alliance system
This provides comprehensive support for data collection and basic research and development for intelligent driving enterprises on smart roads, making it one of the regions with higher concentration of intelligent vehicle networking enterprises in China. At present, it has initially established an entire industrial chain covering more than 30 sub-sectors of the vehicle networking industry.
"The development of Suzhou High-speed Rail New City in terms of supporting intelligent driving industry, hardware environment and infrastructure is highly commendable," said Dai Zhiming, head of the industrial group of the G60 Joint Office. "It has a vast number of testing roads and already possesses the foundation for relevant standards, regulations and systems prior to the establishment of the alliance."
These industry alliances represent different models of collaboration and resource integration.
The Jiaxing Photovoltaic Collaborative Innovation Industry Alliance benefits from the financial, material, equipment and human resources reserves of the province's photovoltaic industry, while the Laser Industry Alliance combines the expertise of a leading enterprise – Suzhou Changguang Huaxin Optoelectronic Technology Co Ltd – with Soochow University to address the technical intensity of the laser industry.
"Good environment, policies and supporting infrastructures have allowed more enterprises and organizations to understand the development of industries. During this process, they can transform G60's resources into productivity and profits on this platform," Dai said.
A new vision of high-quality integration, centered around Songjiang, has been gradually unfolding in the Yangtze River Delta region, and the G60 corridor has witnessed a series of significant milestones.
Talent apartments are allocated to attract senior professionals.
This innovative journey, which began in Songjiang in 2016 as the 1.0 version of the "G60 Shanghai Songjiang Sci-Tech Corridor," has since evolved into the 3.0 version known as the "Yangtze River Delta Science and Technology Innovation Corridor."
Today, it stands as a beacon of progress, solidifying its status as a vital national strategy for integrated development in the delta, as outlined in China's 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025) and "Vision 2035."
In 2023, the nine cities jointly issued the "Declaration on the Innovation Ecosystem of the G60 Science and Technology Innovation Corridor," marking their commitment to building a world-class innovation hub, nurturing international cutting-edge innovation, and fostering a globally competitive industrial cluster.
Talented personnel are the driving force behind innovation, economic growth and competitiveness in the Corridor.
They contribute to the development of a thriving ecosystem that fosters technology advancement, entrepreneurship and collaboration, ultimately positioning the corridor as a dynamic center for innovation in China and on the global stage.
In 2021, the first year when Shanghai's human resource policy allowed recent graduates to settle in its five "New Cities," the number of master's graduates choosing to settle in Songjiang accounted for 42 percent of the total in all five cities.
Last year, the number of international students settling in Songjiang increased by 442 percent compared to the previous year.
The nine cities have introduced more than 40 new talent policies.
They are jointly promoting the "Million Talent Introduction Project," innovating in the human resources industry, building a global talent consulting expert pool, and creating an inter-city alliance for sharing talent training resources.
As of the end of 2022, the nine cities had aggregated more than 11.9 million high-level talented people and skilled professionals.
They have also established 652 academicians' workstations, 458 national enterprise postdoctoral workstations, and cooperated with 196 higher education institutions.
