BEIJING // China’s Zhejiang province today unveiled a multibillion-dollar plan to create more than 100 “science towns”, designed to house thousands of laboratories and innovation centres.
The move is part of the country’s new policy to drive economic growth through innovation, which is intended to enhance the quality of goods and services produced in China, often referred to as the “factory to the world”.
Wan Gang, China’s minister of science and technology, said today the government wants the corporate sector to focus on innovation in areas that has commercial applications and allow public funds to be used for research socially significant, and long-term projects.
The government is determined to boost investment in research and development to 2.5 per cent of GDP by 2020, the minister said. He did not specify the extent investments at present but sources have said it is less than 1 per cent of GDP.
But not everyone is impressed.
"Erecting buildings and towns are not enough. Just because there is a science park does not mean you will get high quality innovation," Julian Evans-Pritchard, a China economist with the consulting firm Capital Economics told The National today.
The eastern coastal Zhejiang province, which is one of the most industrially developed provinces in the country with more than 50 Fortune 500 companies operating there, announced a range of measures to develop “science towns” at a cost of some US$80 billion over a period of three years.
Each town will be 3 square kilometres in size and provide platforms for a specific areas of research in either basic sciences or industrial innovation, Zhou Guohui, the director general of the department of science and technology of Zhejiang Province, said in Beijing today.
Startfor, a US strategic forcasting group, recently said: “China is exhausting the utility of its labour-intensive, low-cost export growth model, forcing a shift up the value chain to produce higher-value goods.”
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