Robust investment, trade activities fuel growth amid 'new four modernizations'

The year 2022 witnessed robust investment and trade activities in Jiading District. Some 59,000 enterprises were added across the suburban district during the period, a year-on-year increase of 7.7 percent and also 5.6 percentage points above the target. Meanwhile, agreements on 228 projects were signed last year, with total investment reaching nearly 100 billion yuan (US$14.7 billion).

On December 30, agreements on 58 projects, with a total investment of more than 17 billion yuan, were collectively signed in Jiading. Among them, 88 percent fell into the "300-billion-level" industries that the district has been building ambitiously, namely the "new four modernizations" (electrification, Internet of Things, intellectualization and sharing) of automobiles, smart sensors and the IoT, and high-performance medical devices and precision medicine.

The "new four modernizations" automobile projects accounted for 43 percent while foreign invested projects took a 12 percent share.

Over the past year, Jiading has been accelerating the development of the digital economy and digital transformation while exploring the metaverse industry.

Li Pin

Lantian Economic City, an economic development zone in Nanxiang, recently signed a strategic cooperation framework agreement with Huashi TV, the wholly-owned subsidiary of Jetsen Technology Co.

Under the agreement, the two parties will form a deep alliance in multiple fields like metaverse application, NFT (non-fungible token) collection and blockchain technology research and development.

"We have planned an over 40,000-square-meter office building not far from the Incity Mega mall in Nanxiang which will house a cluster of metaverse enterprises in the future," said Pei Jiawen, general manager of Lantian Economic City. "Meanwhile, we have also registered a metaverse-related association and been drafting a five-year plan for the development of the industry."

As the metaverse and game industries are closely related, Lantian Economic City is well-positioned to see metaverse as one of its future growth engines.

Currently, Lantian Economic City has attracted about 1,400 game enterprises, including leading industry players such as YOOZOO, Lilith, miHoYo and HyperGryph. In 2021, the total industry output contributed by game enterprises in Lantian Economic City reached 35 billion yuan, or more than 10 percent of the nation's total.

Nanxiang Town has been focusing on fostering a number of emerging industries in recent years such as online new economy, animation and games, intelligent manufacturing, and precision medicine.

There are currently more than 59,000 registered firms in the town, including more than 400 high-tech enterprises, accounting for nearly a quarter of the total high-tech companies in Jiading.

"Our goal for this year is to establish more than 10 investment promotion institutions with each of them recording annual tax revenue of more than 10 million yuan," said Li Feng, deputy director of Jiading. "And we hope to attract more than 100 ventures in terms of industrial projects."

Looking forward, the district will provide better services for enterprises, improve administrative efficiency, optimize its policies and ensure better implementation of various measures to make itself a magnet for investment, a highland for business cooperation and a place to be for the general public.