An aerial view of Zhangjiagang. [Photo/zjgonline.com.cn]
Zhangjiagang, a county-level city in Suzhou, East China's Jiangsu province, was recently named one of the first 47 national-level innovative counties by the Ministry of Science and Technology.
By the end of 2021, the city's spending on research and development accounted for 3.56 percent of its GDP. In the meantime, Zhangjiagang was home to 852 high-tech enterprises and its emerging industries generated 273.2 billion yuan ($39.17 billion) in output. The number of invention patents per 10,000 people in the city stood at 56.17.
Forty-one sci-tech innovation incubators at the national level or above had been built in Zhangjiagang as of August. One of them, the Zhangjiagang Bonded Zone Sci-tech Innovation Park, hosts five industrial clusters related to integrated circuit sensors, intelligent manufacturing, clean energy, new materials and biomedicine.
Zhang Jun, director of the bonded zone's investment service center, said the park has rolled out a series of favorable policies to support its companies. For example, start-ups owned by an individual can receive a maximum of 17 million yuan in subsidies, while those owned by a team can receive up to 50 million yuan.
The park is also cooperating with the Zhangjiagang bureau of science and technology to develop an incubator management platform that will be ready by the end of 2022. The platform is the first of its kind in the city and will improve incubator services, added Zhang.
Due to these efforts, companies in the park have achieved substantial development. One such example is Rainbow Semiconductor Materials Technology Co, which has seen a 50-percent growth in its annual sales. Ma Xiaoming, the president of the company, said they are confident about raking in 100 million yuan a year by 2025 and 300 million yuan by 2027.
In addition to building incubators, Zhangjiagang has also been promoting cooperation between companies and university talents. By 2021, local companies and their university partners had developed over 1,200 new products that generated more than 23 billion yuan in sales.
Xue Qi, director of the Zhangjiagang bureau of science and technology, said they are aiming to attract 1,000 high-tech projects and construct over 600,000 square meters of incubators by the end of 2022.