Modern industrial zones a key economic driver for quality development

Building industrial zones has become an important vessel for Chengdu to promote high-quality economic development and create a modern open-ended industrial system focusing on advanced manufacturing, modern services and new economy, local officials said.

The city, capital of Southwest China's Sichuan province, has planned 66 industrial zones in different categories, each with commerce, healthcare, education and other public service functions.

One of them is a large-scale chip project invested in by China's leading chip maker Tsinghua Unigroup, with total investment of some 50 billion yuan ($7.44 billion). A groundbreaking ceremony for the project was held on April 21 in Chengdu Science City, a technology hub in Tianfu New Area.

The science city, with a planned area of 125 square kilometers, takes digital economy represented by new-generation artificial intelligence as its pillar industry and has attracted a number of leading global universities and companies to locate their projects there.

The ongoing chip project includes research institutes and development centers for integrated circuits, big data, smart city and cloud computing.

"It aims to form a full chip-to-cloud industrial chain ranging from R&D to manufacturing and application, with support of upstream and downstream companies," said Wang Huixuan, co-president of Tsinghua Unigroup.

The project is expected to begin operations in 2022 and will attract 60,000 to 80,000 related technicians and professionals when complete.

In the science city, a "unicorn island" is also under construction. It is expected to complete its first-phase by the end of this year, with the entire project completed in 2022.

With an area of 67.1 hectares and a total investment of about 16.5 billion yuan, the unicorn island is among the first of its kind in the world to incubate and nurture unicorn and unicorn-to-be companies - startups less than 10 years old, but with a market value higher than $1 billion and a market value higher than $100 million respectively.

Six emerging industries will be highlighted on the island, including digital economy, green economy and sharing economy.

On April 17, China Vanke, a leading real estate developer in the country, invested more than 30 billion yuan in the unicorn island, which includes the construction of a science and technology innovation center, a culture and sports recreation center and business facilities that serve the integration of industries and city development.

Currently, the island is home to a series of projects including an innovation center for SenseTime, a chip research center of Arm Holdings, and CloudWalk Technology's headquarters for civil-military integration and artificial intelligence.

The island is expected to attract or develop one super unicorn company within three years, as well as three unicorn companies and several unicorn-to-be companies, according to officials.

Cultural & creative industries

In addition to science and technology, Chengdu is also in the process of developing its cultural and creative industries. On March 28, a signing ceremony for project agreements reached in the first quarter of this year was held at a film, television, cultural and creative industrial zone in the city's Pidu district. The projects included a national key laboratory, a fusion media research center and a 5G high definition research institute and audio-visual center, with total contract value reaching 2.82 billion yuan.

Construction of what is said to be the world's largest cluster of sound stages for film and television was also inaugurated during the signing ceremony. Liu Ruiping, director of the cultural, sports and tourism bureau of the city's Pidu district, said the cluster, with a total investment exceeding 600 million yuan, covers a total area of 60,000 square meters. It includes a single sound stage covering an area of more than 16,000 sq m, which can be used for shooting Hollywood-style blockbusters and epic TV shows when finished.

The industrial zone has a 4-sq-km core area which is home to 36 companies such as Beijing-based Perfect World Education and Huajiao, a video live streaming platform in China.

When construction on the core area is finished, it will be able to accommodate more than 300 film and television production teams and facilitate the shooting of 10 movies, 20 animations and 1,000 TV episodes annually. It is also expected to handle more than 1 million tourists a year.

haonan@chinadaily.com.cn