China to Develop Business Incubation Centers

China will increase the number of business incubation companies to more than 200 by the year 2005, twice the current figure, said Xu Guanhua, vice minister of Science and Technology, at an international conference on business incubation and technology innovation which closed on April 18 in Shanghai.

China now has 110 business incubators, which have helped the establishment of 1,785 enterprises and are still working toward the goal of setting up an additional 5,000 firms, Xu said. Chinese researchers score more than 30,000 scientific and technological achievements a year, and the country is in great need of more business incubation centers to make it possible to transform the growing number of research findings into products. Efforts should be made to change some application-oriented research institutions into business incubation centers, and to form business incubation network in major cities across the country, he said.

At present, science and technology parks set up at universities and others established by returned students and large enterprises are given top priority to developing business incubators. Business incubation companies offer package services to venture firms, which include providing production and communications facilities as well as policy, financial and legal consultations. Such services are important for cutting production costs and abridging the transformation period from research findings to products in the midst of a global technology revolution.

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