The Guangzhou government has promised to expand its cooperation and exchanges with advanced countries and regions to help build the southern metropolis into a core city for the country's innovation industry in 2020.

To this end, the government is now creating a number of innovation centers and industrial parks for international technological transfers, joint research and development, international innovation, incubators for offshore companies and training bases for world talents, said Ma Shu, an official with the Guangzhou bureau of science and information.

Meanwhile, the construction of the city's major scientific industrial parks and projects are being accelerated. These include the Guangzhou New and High-tech Zone, Sino-Singapore Knowledge City, Pazhou Internet Innovation Zone, Nansha Mingzhu Scientific City, Guangzhou Scientific Innovation Corridor, as well as a scientific and technological city, a biomedicine island, a privately run scientific industrial park and an international innovation city.

"The city government is encouraging its scientific companies, scientific research institutes and research and development institutions to set up overseas companies and branches while paying great efforts to build a platform to help attract international talents," Ma told a news conference in Guangzhou on Monday.

"Guangzhou is expected to become a new innovation center in the mainland, offering research for innovation, technical consultancy, testing and inspection, education and training for the cities in the Pearl River Delta region as well as in other regions and Southeast Asian countries," Ma said.

The city's efforts are expected to attract a number of big-name innovation companies and the formation of several important industrial clusters, he said.

Relevant departments have introduced a serious of preferential policies for international talents to settle down in Guangzhou in the coming months, including housing, individual income tax, medical care, education, car purchases and training.

By end of 2015, Guangzhou had registered 66 State-level engineering technology centers, State key labs and State technological innovation platforms, plus 959 provincial-level ones.

The city is also home to119 incubators of local scientific and technological companies, with a floor space of more than 6.5 million square meters, up 4.25 and 3.76 times, respectively, compared with 2010.

The Tianhe II supercomputer in the Supercomputing Center under the Sun Yatsen University, which is the fastest supercomputer in the world, has provided applied services for more than 660 companies and been utilized in many sectors.

 

(China Daily 03/24/2016 page10)