Beijing leads nation's reform on economic restructuring

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The Beijing Municipal Science and Technology Commission yesterday listed major progresses the capital recently made in its "three cities and one area" - Zhongguancun Science City, Huairou Science City, Future Science City, and Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area, which are key platforms through which Beijing strengthens the construction of the national technology innovation center. As Beijing restructures its economy and promotes reform, science and technology services, information services and finance services now represent 63 percent of Beijing's economic growth, and the new economy accounts for nearly one-third of the city's regional GDP.

Beijing restructures its economy

Yang Renquan, deputy director of the Municipal Science and Technology Commission, said that in order to build a globally influential science and technology innovation center, Beijing is promoting the construction of the "three cities and one area," and has made significant progress. Zhongguancun Science City has witnessed the rapid development of a group of innovative enterprises such as Xiaomi and Cambricon, and promoted the construction of two intellectual property protection centers; in Huairou Science City, the first batch of five interdisciplinary research platforms are under construction, while the second batch of nine interdisciplinary research projects has finished the bidding process; in Future Science City, the Sino-Russian Intellectual Property Exchange Center started operation, while some technology service platforms have been introduced; in Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area, an engineering research center for intelligent management and analysis of big data has been approved for construction.

At the same time, Beijing is striving to restructure its economy and build up new momentum for further development. Beijing has become home to some 400 innovation and entrepreneurship service organizations, 281 listed companies, 280 headquarters of foreign-funded companies, and 548 foreign-invested R&D institutions, making itself into a new hub in the global innovation network.

Tackle key problems in underdeveloped field

According to Yang, Beijing is placing more emphasis on strengthening basic research and key technology research in the strategic field and the underdeveloped field. The government has not only improved the infrastructure standards for the high-level R&D institutions, but also pioneered the reform of administrative system in these institutions.  

Luo Minmin, director of the Chinese Institute for Brain Research, said that after the reform researchers will receive sustained and stable financial support. Researcher can each receive a funding of 3.5 million yuan (about US$500,000 ) per year, helping them to focus on their research projects; compensation and benefits for researchers are also in line with international standards; and the assessment of researchers and institutes will adopt the international standards.

Beijing has set up a science and technology fund with a fund of 30 billion yuan, of which 50 percent will be invested into original innovation. In 2017, the city's spending on research and experiment was 158 billion yuan, the R&D investment rate reached 5.64 percent, and the basic research funds accounted for more than a quarter of the national total, making Beijing the propelling force of China's original innovation.

Less burden, more benefits for researchers

Aimed at relieving the administrative burden on researchers while providing incentives, Beijing has promulgated a series of policies and measures since 2016 to grant research institutions greater autonomy in funding management. 

Zhang Dayu, vice president of Beijing University of Civil Engineering and Architecture, told reporters that the university has accelerated reform efforts accordingly, and introduced more than 30 special management methods to optimize the financial reimbursement process. A notable change is that through an online reimbursement reporting system, all procedures for different reimbursement items can be completed in one go. 

The initiatives have surely inspired the morale of the researchers, according to Zhang, who revealed that the university had secured 30 projects with the National Natural Science and Social Science Fund.

Innovation voucher to support enterprises

Beijing has developed an "innovation voucher" initiative to build links between the capital's public knowledge providers and small and micro businesses. A company in Beijing benefited last year from the initiative as it was assisted by a research center of Beijing Normal University to solve a major problem and thereby explore a business opportunity.

From 2014 to 2018, Beijing supported 3,087 innovative voucher projects for 2,609 small and micro enterprises and 130 entrepreneurial teams.

The Capital Science and Technology Sharing Platform has promoted 916 national-level and municipal-level key laboratories and engineering centers in Beijing, with a total value of 27.7 billion yuan, and more than 43,900 sets of instruments and equipment open to the public. The platform integrated 967 premature scientific research projects and helped those projects to produce mature outcomes, resulting in 24,879 patents and technical standards.  

The platform also promote the effective service of open science and technology resources. From July 2017 to June 2018, more than 14,000 companies have benefited from various types of services on the platform, purchasing services with a contractual value of 6.56 billion yuan.


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