Innovation Planning. In 2016, the city promulgated the “13th Five-Year Plan of Guangzhou Municipality on Scientific and Technological Innovation”, proposing to develop Guangzhou into a national central city for innovation with international influence by the year 2020, creating an international scientific and technological innovation hub. The major indexes of scientific and technological innovation is expected to double by the end of the 13th Five-Year Plan period, namely the R&D expenditure will take up 3.0% of the local GDP and the number of high and new tech enterprises will reach 6,000 in total.

Innovation Policy

In 2016, Guangzhou released and consummated the “1+9” innovation policy and the “1+4” talent policy, covering the fields of enterprise innovation capability, scientific achievements commercialization, innovation platform, innovation talents as well as scientific and technological finances. The city handed out 1,220 “Green Card for Talents”, thus granting “citizen status” to talents. A total of 16 projects of local researchers and researching teams won the annual national science and technology awards.

Innovation Enterprise

In 2016, Guangzhou was ranked as No.1 of all Chinese sub-provincial cities and above as far as the number of newly founded high and new tech enterprises are concerned. There are 2,820 newly founded high and new tech enterprises throughout the year, more than ten times of the number of newly founded enterprises in 2015, with the total number reaching 4,740 in Guangzhou. The number of local high and new tech enterprises, which has been selected as Top 50 Best Chinese Innovation Enterprises during the year, continued to be one of the top three among all Chinese cities for three consecutive years. There were 120,000 scientific and technological innovation enterprises in the city with the innovation enterprise cluster gradually taking into shape.

Guangzhou was home to 3 Fortune Global 500 enterprises in the same year, including 2 high and new tech enterprises; 21 Chinese Top 500 enterprises, including 10 high and new tech enterprises; 8 Chinese Top 500 Manufacturing Enterprises, including 4 high and new tech enterprises and 44 Chinese Top 500 Service Industry Enterprises, including 10 high and new tech enterprises.

Innovative Finance

In 2016, the city saw 202 enterprises being listed on the New Third Board (New Over-the-Counter Market), bringing the total number to 348, both ranking as No.1 of all provincial capitals of the nation. The average net asset of the newly listed enterprises was also ranked as No.1 of the top four Chinese cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. The city granted the credit of 4.247 billion yuan to 418 enterprises throughout the year, with the credit scale ranking as No.1 in the nation.

Innovation Platform

In 2016, the city was listed on the top ranks of the nation for the second consecutive year concerning the number of scientific and technological innovation enterprise incubators. There were 73 newly founded scientific and technological innovation enterprise incubators (including 21 national-class incubators), bringing the total number to 192 and the total incubating area of 8.4 million square meters, housing over 10,000 enterprises and projects. There were also 80 newly established maker spaces, increasing to 115 in total; 16 newly founded provincial level new-type R&D institutions, increasing to 44 in total; 19 national key labs and 12 national class technology transfer service institutions. What’s more, 103 IAR (industry-academia-research) coordinated innovation unions had also been set up during the same period.

Model Innovation Enterprise

In the same year, the city strongly pushed the construction of the Pazhou Internet Innovation Cluster, successfully attracting 20 Internet conglomerates to relocate in the region, including Alibaba, Tencent, Fosun Group, vip.com, Gome Holdings Group and mi.com. An industry cluster will take into shape in the region in the next three to five years, boasting the operation revenue of 100 billion yuan and becoming a new model for scientific and technological innovation clusters.

Innovation Talents

Guangzhou is blessed with congenital advantages in talents, being home to over 70% of the scientific and technological workers of Guangdong province, over 95% of the doctor’s degree holders as well as 97% of the national key subjects and 80% of the higher learning institutions of the province. In 2016, Guangzhou proposed to earmark 3.5 billion yuan in the next five years to subsidize 100 leading innovation & business-starting teams and 500 leading talents for innovation & business-starting.