Capital playing key role as beacon for

Beijing has accelerated its integration into the world’s innovation system over the past decade, becoming a hub of international cuttingedge sci-tech innovation and an important force in driving the global industrial revolution, local officials said.

The Chinese capital has also achieved the leap from a national scientific and technological innovation center into a key hub of global sci-tech innovation.

The city has focused on core technologies to carry out a number of major projects in fields such as integrated circuits, new materials and energy science, in a bid to serve as an originator of technological innovation in emerging industries.

It has built three national laboratories in the Zhongguancun area and the districts of Changping and Huairou, centering on information, life science and energy sectors, to support the development of national research institutions, high-level research universities and leading tech enterprises.

This first-class environment for innovations has continuously gathered top overseas talents. Over the past 10 years, the number of returnees and foreign employees in Beijing has increased at an average annual rate of 12 percent. In 2022, it had 339 highly cited researchers and academics, accounting for 4.7 percent of the world’s total.

Xiaoliang Sunney Xie, a winner of the Albany Medical Center Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research, is one of them.

Xie used to be a professor at Harvard University and now works at the Changping national lab. Last year, he won the Zhongguancun award of outstanding contributions due to his multiple achievements in single-cell genomics.

Other top scientists include Shing-Tung Yau, the first Chineseborn mathematician to win the Fields Medal, the highest international award for mathematical studies; Caucher Birkar, winner of the 2018 Fields Medal; An Wang Zhonglin, winner of Eni Award, also known as the “Nobel Prize in Energy”. Wang is also a founding director of the Beijing Institute of Nanoenergy and Nanosystems under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

In addition to talents, Beijing has also seen a surge in innovative enterprises. In 2022, it was home to 102 unicorns.

According to a news conference of the 2023 Zhongguancun Forum held on May 15, about 293 sci-tech companies were founded daily in Beijing last year, 3.8 times that of in 2012.

That year, Beijing surpassed London for the first time to rank third globally in innovation, according to the Global Innovation Hubs Index 2022 released by Springer Nature Group and the Center for Industrial Development and Environmental Governance at Tsinghua University.

Guided by an action plan issued in 2021, Beijing will basically finish the construction of the sci-tech innovation center by 2025. By 2035, the innovation center will lead the world in innovation, competitiveness and influence, and effectively support China to build a scientific and technological powerhouse.

Beijing has made several breakthroughs in cutting-edge technological fields. They include Majorana zero mode, one of the most exotic phenomena in condensed matter physics; innovative gene-editing techniques; a brain-inspired Tianjic chip; the world’s first prototype machine of quantum direct communication; a long-life superconducting qubit chip; and Chang’an Chain, the first independent and controllable blockchain software and hardware technology system in China.

Major sci-tech achievements are partly attributed to the innovation and reform of related systems and mechanisms.

In 2020, Beijing started implementing a regulation to promote the transformation of sci-tech achievements, as opposed to a rigid system where the ownership and income of the achievements could only be owned by the research institutions. It has greatly stimulated the innovation enthusiasm of researchers, experts said.

Also, the city has seen faster gathering of global innovation resources. For instance, the Zhongguancun Forum has become a premier event to facilitate dialogue in science and technology between China and the rest of the world.

Three top international journals — Nature, Science and Cell — have held regular academic exchange activities in Beijing; and RELX, owner of the medical journal The Lancet, has conducted strategic cooperation with the city.

Beijing has been playing an increasingly important role in the global innovation network, said Niels Peter Thomas, president of Springer Nature Group’s operations in China. He expected more Chinese cities to develop into international sci-tech innovation centers in the future.