Shenzhen’s strategic emerging industries take center stage

The functional cellphone Tecno has become a common sight on the main streets of Africa. Currently, this cellphone brand, which is not widely known at home, has been widely accepted in Africa. Tecno cellphones now account for about 50% of the market in Africa due to their superior quality, low power usage and unique functions.

　　The wide acceptance of Tecno cellphones in the international market reflects the rapid development of strategic emerging industries in Shenzhen. Currently, strategic emerging industries are now the main engine of Shenzhen’s economic development and are playing a critical role in this city. In the first half of 2018, the seven strategic emerging industries in Shenzhen achieved an added value of 414.604 billion yuan, an increase of 8.3%, and 0.3 percentage points higher than the GDP growth rate.

　　Emerging industries develop fast with strong momentum

　　The rapid development of emerging industries helped Shenzhen step onto the pathway of quality growth and connotative development, and created a favorable mechanism in which development is driven by innovation.

　　For example, Shenzhen makes comprehensive plans with foresight in the bio-tech industry. It has strengthened research in core and cutting-edge technologies and created an ecological system of industrial innovation. In recent years, Shenzhen’s bio-tech industry has grown rapidly at an average rate of 20% each year. In H1 2018, the city’s biomedical industry saw added value of 14.192 billion yuan, an increase of 23.8%.

　　As a national base of the bio-tech industry, Shenzhen made great achievements in the fields of biomedical engineering and biomedicine. The city is ranked among the world’s leaders in high-end biomedical engineering, gene sequencing, bioinformatic analysis and cell therapy. Data shows that Shenzhen has 300 innovation platforms of different levels and categories in the bio-tech field, among which 21 are on the national level. The city’s major industrial parks include the International Bio-Tech Valley, Shenzhen High-Tech Industrial Park and Pingshan National Bio-Tech Base.

　　In the field of next generation IT, Shenzhen has become an important base for IT manufacturing, R&D, exports and logistics center in China, and the headquarters or regional headquarters of the top 10 IT companies are located in Shenzhen. In H1 2018, Shenzhen’s next generation IT industry had an added value of 211.199 billion yuan, an increase of 9.6% and 1.6 percentage points higher than GDP growth rate.

　　Indeed, Shenzhen has issued plans and supporting policies for seven strategic emerging industries -- biotechnology, internet, new energy, new materials, culture creativity, next generation IT, energy saving and environmental protection -- and keeps cultivating and generating new business patterns. To push forward the concentrated development of strategic emerging industries, Shenzhen has constructed multiple key zones in recent years, such as Liuxiandong Strategic Emerging Industry Headquarter Base and Baguang International Bio-Tech Valley, which bolstered momentum for strategic emerging industries.

　　Leading companies are making great contributions.

　　Due to the rapid development of industries, the results of innovation have been numerous. Leading companies such as Huawei, Tencent, BYD Auto, Mindray and SuperD have risen to the top in their respective industries and indeed the world. They are playing an irreplaceable role in pushing forward industrial development.

　　Some companies with high growth have developed into industrial champions and become the core driving force for emerging industries. Hepalink has obtained the right to set the international market prices of heparin-related products. Beike Biotechnology has expanded with the largest-scale and most robust data in the world in terms of security and effectiveness of clinical research on stem cells. BTR has become the largest supplier of negative electrode materials of lithium-ion batteries in the world. DJI-Innovations accounts for more than 70% of the market share of consumer drones in the world. UBTech is the first high-growth humanoid robot company in the world and attracted widespread attention in the industry.

　　Shenzhen is strengthening top-level design of the innovation system and pushing forward technological innovation and industrial development through innovation in policies and systems. By issuing the Plan for Reforming Diversified Methods of Supporting Emerging Industries with Special Funds and implementing the special plan for supporting strategic emerging industries, Shenzhen provided support for more than 12,000 industrial projects. The city is carrying out a special project for integrated development of “industrial chain + innovation chain”, and it conducts more than 100 key scientific and technological projects every year in order to strengthen breakthrough efforts in core technologies.

　　“As it turns out, Shenzhen has seized the important opportunity of global technological reform at the earliest moment and in the best way possible,” says Song Bing, the secretary general of China Innovation South IP Institute. The rapid growth of strategic emerging industries enables Shenzhen to cultivate an industrial layout with stronger innovation capacity, better structure and higher quality, and helps with the industrial transformation and upgrade.