Taizhou city stimulates sci-tech innovation of enterprises

The prefecture-level city of Taizhou – located in East China's Jiangsu province – has staged a raft of measures, in order to bolster the technical innovation of its local businesses.

Taizhou has introduced a system where special points are assigned to enterprises based on their sci-tech performances.

That's in a bid to integrate technical innovation policies dispersed in municipal departments – including talent, development and reforms, technology, industry and information technology and market supervision.

The accumulated points of enterprises can then be exchanged for funds and Taizhou paid out nearly 1.4 billion yuan ($196 million) to over 5,500 enterprises.

One example is Jiangsu Boqing Automation Technology Co Ltd, whose 24 innovation points has brought in 240,000 yuan of funds. The company has utilized the funds in developing trackless crawl type all-position welding robots.

The welding equipment that is made by Jiangsu Boqing Automation Technology Co Ltd. [Photo/WeChat account: tzfabu]

The city also established many industry-research platforms to improve overall levels of technology. Moreover, Taizhou is now home to 13 joint innovation centers.
The Taizhou Industrial Technology Research Institute was unveiled in 2022, co-built by Taizhou and the Jiangsu Industrial Technology Research Institute. The institute recognizes ownership of achievements, disposals and profit rights to the project team – all of which aim to stimulate the innovative vitality of researchers.

In recent years, Taizhou has also established 14 offshore innovation centers in other cities throughout the country to promote the incubation of projects.

As a prime example, Jiangsu Recbio Technology Co Ltd's offshore innovation center in Wuhan city in Central China's Hubei province has over 10 researchers.

"The technology and research achievements will be transferred to Taizhou and achieve commercialization in Taizhou," said company director Liu Yong.

The county-level city of Jingjiang in Taizhou establishes an innovation center in Shanghai. [Photo/WeChat account: tzfabu]

In addition, Taizhou has set up an angel investment fund totaling 1 billion yuan to assist in the growth of sci-tech startups.

The city gave its first funds to an anti-tumor, small molecule-targeted drugs project. Though in the seed stage, the project's strong team attracted the Taizhou's funds management team, with an investment of 8 million yuan.

At present, Taizhou is home to 3,895 technology-based small and medium-sized enterprises, some 1,601 high-tech enterprises, 10 potential unicorn enterprises and 10 innovative leading enterprises.