It helped spur scientific development in China’s cities
Making Your Own Shanghai: Bringing Science and Economic Growth into the Local Economy: The Case for Electric Vehicles and Power Devices in China, based on a Regional Master Planck Institute
As other provincial leaders try to make their own cities, they don’t necessarily need to follow Hefei’s model, as there are different ways to connect science with economic growth. Often, the local branch of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) — the Beijing-headquartered mega-institute that is the global leader in the Nature Index — is a good place to start. The Institute of Botany has dozens of regional centre throughout the country. These offshoot institutes sometimes respond to scientific practicalities: Kunming is located in a semi-tropical and extremely biodiverse region, for example. Second, leaders might attempt to establish some of the tie-ins with international investors and multinational corporations that have helped Shanghai’s biotech industry grow; the city hosts large research labs for pharmaceutical giants such as GSK and Pfizer, and a district for start-up businesses in Zhangjiang, where young innovators can get land, office space and tax breaks. Shenzhen is home to many tech companies and they have done well in the way they targeted the domestic consumer market. Finally, they can coordinate so each province is able to target a different area of the domestic consumer market.
Several Chinese universities have answered the call to build the country’s semiconductor capabilities and workforce. In 2021, a dozen universities — including heavyweights Tsinghua University and Peking University in Beijing — established schools dedicated to integrated circuits. But there is still a way to go before these efforts will bear enough fruit to bring China up to speed with other countries, says Erik Baark, a social scientist who studies China’s innovation policies at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin.
China accounts for more than half of all new electric cars sold globally, but geopolitical tensions are threatening to undermine its success. The US imposed a 100% tariffs on Chinese electric vehicle imports, which was followed by a 37.6% tariffs from the European Union, raising concerns of overcapacity in the space.
Aligning with China’s broader goals of reducing its reliance on fossil fuels, MIC2025 is pushing for renewable energy equipment and energy-storage devices to account for more than 80% of the Chinese market. Rapid progress has been made in photovoltaic solar cell production, in particular. China used other countries for important materials and parts of the photovoltaic cells when MIC2025 was launched. 80% of the world’s solar cell exports are exported from it, and it is home to 10 leading suppliers of solar-cell manufacturing equipment. The world’s largest solar farm is in the city of Urumqi in northwestern China. With more than 5 million photovoltaic panels spread over an area roughly the size of New York City, the facility can generate enough power to keep a small country running for a year.
Medical devices and pharmaceuticals are the focus area for MIC2025. Goals include boosting the number of China-developed drugs that are registered in other countries and bringing as many as 30 new medications to market by 2025. Helen Chen, head of life sciences and health Care at LEK consulting, says many Chinese-developed assets have been picked up by international companies. “The biopharma sector in China is clearly moving towards innovation,” says Chen.
Finding a balance between scientific breakthroughs and innovation with a practical outcome will require restructuring incentives so they encourage both, adds Zhang. This would involve developing more clear-cut definitions for intellectual-property ownership in academic–industry partnerships
Between these powers of the state, international investment and the vast base of consumers that China has to offer, scientific breakthroughs can be rapidly herded from the laboratory to market to have maximum economic impact. So, in the years to come, it will be no surprise to see other Chinese cities that are relatively unheard of in the West leap up the Nature Index Science Cities rankings. China’s leadership sees a need to put it on the map more if it’s less unlikely, and science is the key to economic and political importance.
