Taizhou accelerates innovation momentum

Since the start of the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-25), Taizhou has strengthened its manufacturing foundation while shifting its innovation approach from isolated breakthroughs to system-wide progress, carving out a distinctive presence in the Yangtze River Delta's innovation landscape.

A growing number of Taizhou enterprises have emerged as trailblazers in innovation, supported by the city's pioneering enterprise innovation credit system. Under this mechanism, every act of innovation — from R&D spending and patent output to talent recruitment — is quantified and rewarded. To date, the system has delivered nearly 1.4 billion yuan ($197.75 million) in incentives to thousands of enterprises.

Taizhou has also built a city-level platform that promotes collaboration between industry, universities and research institutes. The platform has collected more than 1,300 corporate technical demands and facilitated over 600 cooperative projects.

By the end of 2024, the number of high-tech enterprises in Taizhou had reached 2,197, with an average annual growth rate of 15.08 percent. The city's R&D expenditure rose to 2.9 percent of its GDP.

To speed up the journey from proof of concept to pilot testing to full industrial application, Taizhou has built a complete transformation chain that brings more laboratory findings to the production line.

Five years ago, the city had only seven teaching- or training-oriented colleges and 13 research institutes. To address the shortage, Taizhou partnered with top research bodies to establish sci-tech platforms, enabling better alignment between technological supply and industrial demand.

With the establishment of the Peking University Health Science Center Taizhou Innovation Hub, the Yangtze River Delta Medical Technology Innovation Center, and the Xinghua Center of Materials Acadamy, Jiangsu Industrial Technology Research Institute, the city's innovation platform network has taken shape.

Recognizing that hard-tech projects face long cycles, high risks and limited access to private capital, Taizhou made a crucial move: it created its first angel investment fund, totaling 1 billion yuan, dedicated to seed and early-stage sci-tech enterprises. The fund has invested in 16 projects to date.