Building more world-class innovative cities- Zhao Gang, a researcher at the China Academy of Science and Technology Development Strategy

The Fifth Plenary Session of the Nineteenth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China proposed to adhere to the core position of innovation in the overall situation of China's modernization construction, and take scientific and technological self-reliance and self-improvement as the strategic support for national development. In the journey of building an innovative power, we must build a national innovative city. How to build an innovative city? The Economic Daily reporter interviewed Zhao Gang, a researcher at the China Academy of Science and Technology Development Strategy.

Reporter: What is the significance of building an innovative city, and what is the relationship with the national innovation strategy?

Zhao Gang: Innovative cities are one of the most important carriers and grippers for implementing the national innovation strategy. Only by building an innovative city can we build an innovative country. Among the various elements of innovation, the most important elements are talents, capital, and technology, and the innovation elements must be transformed into productive forces, and the landing platform is the city. The city is the place with the highest concentration of innovation resources and innovative elements, and also the place where the resources for providing services for innovative talents such as life, education, and medical care are the most concentrated.

Some cities in developed countries, such as New York in the United States, London in the United Kingdom, and Paris in France, are concentrated in some of the world's best universities and research institutions and the best enterprises. Their national innovation capacity is among the best because of the large number of world-class innovation resources and elements gathered in these cities.

For China, it is necessary to gather innovative resources in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region represented by Beijing, the Yangtze River Delta region represented by Shanghai, and the Greater Bay Area represented by Guangzhou and Shenzhen to attract the best talents, the best enterprises, the best universities and scientific research institutes. By building world-class innovative cities in these areas, we have a good foundation for building a world science and technology power and a major science center in the world.

Reporter: What will happen to urban governance and citizens' lives when building an innovative city?

Zhao Gang: Building an innovative city will have a positive impact on urban governance and people's lives. First-class innovative cities should provide a first-class ecological environment for innovation and entrepreneurship, including ecological environment, humanistic environment, rule of law environment, business environment, etc. Innovative cities will provide citizens with a good living environment, education environment, employment environment, and medical environment. Urban life will be more convenient and enjoy more technological services.

Reporter: What are the key tasks of innovative city construction?

Zhao Gang: The key tasks of innovative city construction are five aspects: first, to create a first-class innovation and entrepreneurship ecological environment, to attract important innovation resources such as industry-university-research funds; second, to smooth the innovation chain and industrial chain, and establish a complete innovation chain from basic research to industrialization; third, to provide good infrastructure, including traditional infrastructure such as transportation and electricity, as well as "new infrastructure" fields such as data centers and 5G networks; fourth, to build a financial environment for service innovation, to provide supporting capital services for innovation and entrepreneurship activities, and to enrich and diversify Fifth, we must build an open and international environment.

Reporter: How should we build innovative cities during the 14th Five-Year Plan period?

Zhao Gang: First of all, we must do a good job in the top-level design of innovative city construction, classify construction, and cooperate with the construction of innovative countries. For example, the goal of Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Guangzhou is to build a world-class innovative city, and the country's strategic scientific and technological forces should be highly concentrated in these cities, and it is necessary to do a good job in original innovation and solve the "card neck" technical problems. It is also necessary to build a number of innovative cities with industrial characteristics and create internationally competitive industrial clusters, such as biomedicals in Suzhou, optoelectronics in Wuhan, and artificial intelligence in Hefei. In addition, intensive educational resources and beautiful urban environment can become the advantages of innovative cities, and a number of innovative cities with their own characteristics should be built throughout the country.

Second, to build an innovative city, we must improve the awareness of innovation in the whole society and popularize the culture of innovation.

Third, it is necessary to formulate innovative urban development policies and regulations around talents. It is necessary to attract first-class talents, scientists, entrepreneurs and other innovative talents, so that they can give full play to their role and rely on policies and regulations to attract and retain talents.

Economic Daily reporter She Huimin

Source: Economic Daily