On August 6, Dongguan Songshan Lake National High-Tech Industrial Development Zone (hereinafter referred to as the “SSL Zone”) held the Work Review Meeting for the First Half of Year 2018. It was disclosed at the Meeting that several major economic indicators of the Zone, including GDP, tax revenue, total import & export volume, total output value of industrial enterprises above designated size, had reached new historical highs. The SSL Zone had demonstrated emergence of new main forces and new drivers for growth and sustained development momentum.
During the first half of 2018, SSL Zone realized a GDP of up to 33.015 billion RMB, increasing by 13.9% year on year; total tax revenue was 11.401 billion RMB, up by 54.86% over the same period last year; total import-export volume stood at 102.766 billion RMB, an increase of 35.0% year on year; total fixed assets investment was 7.328 billon RMB, an year-on-year growth of 43.0%. The overall development has been stable with good momentum for growth.
Huang Shaowen, Standing Committee Member of CPC Dongguan Municipal Committee and Secretary of Songshan Lake CPC Working Committee, said that in the years to come, Songshan Lake would guide its overall work with the essence of important speeches by President Xi Jinping, improve execution and enhance the new advantage of leading-edge development to build an experimental zone, pilot zone and demonstration zone for economic and social development in Dongguan. In this way, SSL Zone would strive to be a leader in innovation-driven development, development quality, balanced development, talent gathering, urban quality, as well as basic-level Party building so as to stay ahead of top national high-tech zones. Xi Jinping’s though on socialism with Chinese characteristics for a new era would be promoted to take root in the SSL Zone and yield fruitful results.
Development trend
Seeking high-quality development while maintaining medium-to-high speed of growth
“In the first half of this year, a group of new highlights emerged in SSL Zone in terms of innovation-driven growth, industrial development, talent attracting, coordinated development and urban construction. While maintaining a medium-to-high growth rate, SSL Zone has headed towards high-quality development both socially and economically.”
For the first half of 2018, SSL Zone excelled the rest of the city in both the total size and growth speed of the three major economic indicators, including GDP, added value of industrial enterprises above designated size and gross investment in fixed assets. In particular, total GDP in the Zone reached 33.015 billion RMB from January to June, 2018, a year-on-year increase of 13.9% and the 8th consecutive quarterly growth of over 13%. The growth rate is higher than the average level of the whole country (6.8%), the whole province (7.1%) and the whole city (7.8%). For the first time, half-year revenue in SSL Zone exceeded 10 billion RMB.
Good performance has also been made in other indicators of economic development quality. For the first part of this year, SSL Zone registered 7.328 billion RMB of fixed assets investment, up by 43.0% over the same period last year. This included a year-on-year growth of 20.3% in industrial investment, and of 117.2% in technological transformation. SSL Zone came 1st in the city in terms of the absolute amount of fixed-assets investment, industrial investment and investment in technological transformation.
From January to June, SSL Zone had 609 newly-registered enterprises with a total registered amount of 4.725 billion RMB; total patent filings increased 30.26% year on year to reach 5,093, of which 2,931 were invention patents, an increase of 29.4% year on year.
With regard to the building of innovation platforms, construction of the Neutron Science City has been planned by relying on such large-scale scientific facilities as China Spallation Neutron Source (CSNS) and Southern Light Source. Preliminary work for land arrangement and old village reconstruction has now been started and a construction projects database has been established. Efforts have also been made in promoting the establishment of the Songshan Lake Materials Lab and assisting with the pre-fabrication study of Nanfang synchrotron radiation facility.
As for the improvement of development quality and benefits, the advanced manufacturing sector accounted for 92.08% of total industrial added value, increasing by 2.18% year on year; the high-tech manufacturing industry accounted for 93.15% of total industrial added value, increasing by 1.62% year on year. In addition, the 82 pilot enterprises of the Multiplication Program recorded a growth of 32.56% in business revenue compared to the same period last year and for the 22 major enterprises, the growth in business revenue was 41.92%. All of them showed a trend of rapid growth.
In attracting businesses and investment to cultivate the potential for sustainable growth, SSL Zone introduced a host of high-quality projects in high-end electronic information and biotechnology to foster new driving forces for sustainable development. During the first half of the year, five land purchase projects have been imported into the Zone, with an agreed investment of 10.43 billion RMB.
In advancing overall planning of the SSL Zone and promoting coordinated regional development, SSL Zone gradually rolled out the renovation work for the neighboring villages and started environment improvement projects in ten villages. A number of cooperative projects between SSL Zone and various towns made solid progress, such as Fulong Village Project in Shipai Town for industry transformation of industrial lands, the “Nan Gui Fang” Innovation and Entrepreneurship Street Project in Chashan Town, and the Zhongke Venture Capital Fund Project in Shilong Town. The 120-mu R&D theme park for taking in R&D projects in the nearby towns was officially launched. Education coordination in the SSL Zone and group-based running of middle and primary schools entered a period of actual implementation.
Dongguan started to implement the three-year action plan for urban quality improvement in 2017. In line with the overall arrangement of Guangdong province and Dongguan city, SSL Zone fought an uphill battle to tackle water, air and land pollution, remarkably improving the ecological environment. Notable results have been made in enhancing sanitation and urban greening. For four times in a row, Dongguan came top in the delicacy urban management appraisal by a third party.
Upgrade of the Innovation Environment
Being the “engine” of scientific and technological innovation in Dongguan
China Spallation Neutron Source has passed process appraisal and acceptance and Songshan Lake Materials Lab and PRD Office of the CAS Institute of Physics has been inaugurated. The location of these and many other major S&T platforms in SSL Zone since 2018 have contributed to the upgrading of the innovation environment in the Zone.
According to the overall arrangement of Guangdong province and Dongguan city, SSL Zone explicitly stated it would make sustained efforts to increase the driving forces for innovative development by sticking to the innovation-driven development strategy. Focusing on the “eight effective means” of advancing innovation-driven development and seizing the historical opportunity of building the National Independent Innovation Demonstration Zone of the PRD Region and the Guangzhou-Shenzhen Science and Technology Corridor, SSL Zone will devote major efforts to fostering innovation subjects and gathering innovation elements to power scientific and technological innovation in the whole city.
As part of these efforts, SSL Zone will advance the construction of major S&T innovation platforms according to a high standard. Planning formulation, land coordination and construction of support facilities will be accelerated to promote the location of Nanfang synchrotron radiation facility and NSCS spectrometers for users. As the University Innovation City has been completed and put into use, it will be utilize to gather innovative resources of competitive departments and key projects of renowned Chinese universities to promote the integrative development of S&T capital, financial capital and land capital.
So far, Songshan Lake has gathered together more than 20 new-type R&D institutions. In order to increase both the quantity and quality of new-type R&D institutions, SSL Zone will deepen cooperation with well-known Chinese and foreign universities like Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Sun Yat-Sen University, Peking University and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology to set up more such institutions. Meanwhile, explorations shall be made in introducing supportive measures that encourage these institutions to build special core technological service projects of their own and establish industrial technology alliance in collaboration with enterprises in related industry.
To strengthen the building of the incubation and breeding system, Songshan Lake will work with advanced incubator operation teams both at home and abroad to strive for the location of incubator carriers in SSL Zone. The goal is to build one to two national incubators and two to three provincial incubator cultivation units in the year and increase the number of high-tech industrial enterprises being incubated to 150. An incubator service team will be formed based on the High-Tech Entrepreneurship Service Center. By referring to the practice of Finnish Government in building and operating S&T incubators, SSL Zone will quickly implement relevant work carriers to provide necessary facilities for enterprise incubation.
In this process, SSL Zone will give special priority to high-tech enterprises by increasing special services to these enterprises and supporting more enterprises to become a high-tech one. The yearly goal is to add 50 new high-tech enterprises so that the total number will reach 330. A batch of high-tech enterprises that have the potential to grow into a large high-quality enterprise shall be selected for tracking purpose. Further, SSL Zone shall guide high-tech enterprises to develop further in the area of science and technology, assist them in tapping new markets and help them redouble their size and profitability.
Taking the building of the provincial pilot to reform talent development as an opportunity, SSL Zone will speed up construction of the Songshan Lake Talent Building and intensify matchmaking with Hong Kong, Macao and overseas talent projects.
In the meantime, SSL Zone will encourage enterprises to set up R&D institutions and support large private enterprises to establish new-type basic research institutes. In doing so, SSL Zone aims to see that up to 60% of enterprises above designated sizes shall have an R&D institution and that R&D input take up over 12% of total GDP. Moreover, professional organizations will be organized to visit to-be-listed enterprises in the Zone to accelerate their listing and improve their ability to participate in the capital market. While advancing construction of the National Intellectual Property Rights Pilot Zone and Provincial Demonstration Area for Concentrated Development of Intellectual Property Right Services Industry, SSL Zone will work to strengthen building of the intellectual property service system to see that over 10,000 patent applications will be filed in the year.
Regional Coordination
Building the pilot projects necessary to set off coordinated development in the Songshan Lake Area
Since Dongguan adopted the region-based coordinated development strategy in 2017, Songshan Lake Area, one of the forerunners of the strategy, has scored significant projects in many fields. During the first part of 2018, Songshan Lake Area recorded up to 30.9% of Dongguan’s total added value of industrial enterprises above designated size, ranking first in the city in both the total amount and growth rate of added industrial value.
In the days and months to come, Songshan Lake Area will work to complete preparation of the Implementation Plan for Coordinated Development of Songshan Lake Area as soon as possible and explore to establish a platform for review of construction projects in Songshan Lake Area for one-station final approval. In addition, Songshan Lake Area will continue to improve its economic performance monitoring mechanism and work out the method for statistical indicators reporting and evaluating, thus giving full pay to the role of the evaluation mechanism.
Besides, Songshan Lake Area will push forward preparation of the Eastern Industrial Park Plan among other preparatory work and speed up construction of 16 key pilots and 63 major projects. As well, construction of the 120-mu R&D Theme Park at Songshan Lake will be expedited to take over R&D projects from neighboring towns and promote integration of scientific and technological resources in the Area.
To be specific, Songshan Lake Area will prioritize construction of JV projects to set off development in the Area, such as the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Street Project in Nanshe Village, Chasha Town, the Incubator Project of Zhongke Information Port Industrial Incubation Co., Ltd. in Shilong Town, and Fulong Village Project in Shipai Town for industry transformation of industrial lands.
As the whole city pushes forward the “Beautiful Dongguan” program, Songshan Lake Area will use this opportunity to promote integration of SSL Zone with towns in the Area and improve the urban quality of this Area from all aspects. Through overall planning, Songshan Lake Area will connect 40 plus dead-end streets, build networked roads and enhance connectivity between SSL Zone and various towns to ensure two-way interaction of innovation resources. Great efforts shall be made to renovate the 51 villages bordering on the SSL Zone and see that phase one of Xiniupo Renovation Project in Dalang be completed and that the cooperation agreement be signed and share transfer be completed for Niuchang Village Renovation Project in Liaobu Town.
In regard to coordinated development of public services, Songshan Lake Area will boost balanced development of community health service institutions and on the basis of consolidating the initial achievements of medical treatment alliance, gradually establish a hierarchic diagnosis & treatment model that is characterized by “first diagnosis at the community level, two-way transfer treatment, separate treatments of acute and chronic diseases and linkage between medical institutions at different levels”. With a focus on promoting group-based school running, Songshan Lake Area will explore ways of achieving integrative development of teaching and research and set up the Songshan Lake teaching and research sub-office to make educational resources coordination an example and highlight of coordinated development in the entire Zone.