Tianjin is launching a ‘double creativity’ pilot zone for entrepreneurship and innovation, announced by Tianjin mayor Huang Xingguo and on the instructions of China’s State Council.
China is getting serious about innovation – and nowhere is more serious about serving it up than Tianjin.
The city on China’s northeastern seaboard is launching a ‘double creativity’ pilot zone for entrepreneurship and innovation, announced by Tianjin mayor Huang Xingguo and on the instructions of China’s State Council.
The pilot zone will benefit from what Zheng Weiming, an official with the Binhai New Area’s Central Business District – where the new zone is to be located – calls ‘geared play’.
Ambitious Firms
The pilot zone initially has 40 tenants, including headquarters for GE Smart City Innovation Center, which will not only establish smart city initiatives within the CBD area, such as smart lighting, charging stations and parking systems but will also incubate a group of high-tech start-ups and form clusters.
Other tenants include WTD China’s cross-border and e-commerce program, Wanda Group’s new international trading and financial services program, PayEase and Cheyipai, China’s second-biggest used car website.
By 2020 it aims to house 100 cutting edge firms, 30 innovation focused incubators, 1000 larger companies, all of which will together employ about 50,000 people.
It will focus on six pillar industries: financial services; science and technology; cross-border trade and e-commerce; software and mobile internet; creative & education industries; and marine economy and port services.
Policy Menus
To make all this happen, a host of supportive policies are on offer. The first of Zheng’s menus include: a $150 million development fund; office rent subsidies; tax subsidies; one off subsidies for large scientific research institutions; operating subsidies for incubators; and easier access to visas and local household registration documents for foreign and domestic talent. The local government is willing to share some of the risk inherent in launching a company and also provides incentives for CEOs to list their firms on the stock exchange.
Zheng’s second menu relates to Tianjin’s status as a free trade zone, which aims to provide a favorable environment for innovation by attracting multinational corporations, Chinese State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) and branches of top universities. The zone’s role is to simplify international trade, make it easier for companies to access funding and establish a promotional vehicle to boost Tianjin’s profile.
In addition to ‘geared play’, Zheng says the new pilot zone for entrepreneurship and innovation will also benefit from what he terms ‘add-up’ – the regional integration of Tianjin with the capital Beijing and surrounding Hebei Province.
Incubating Success
That’s certainly what Tencent’s Yuan Ziwen thinks too. The Chinese internet giant has just opened its biggest incubator in Tianjin and Yuan, who works on the firm’s Open-Platform program, expects the new pilot zone to have a big impact.
Tencent is opening its third generation of Open Platforms – the first generation focused on online support to developers, the second generation were physical incubators with office space and generation 3.0 combines both previous approaches.
China today has a mushrooming number of incubators, but Yuan says Tencent can offer something different.
The company claims to have 800 million users of its QQ and WeChat services and says innovators within its incubating ecosystem can use its virtual distribution vehicles to access 150 million daily users. It also provides a matchmaking service to enable start-ups to access talent and experience.
Other nine incubators in the zone include Northern Territory, which has a Zhongguancun origin, Bauhinia Technology Business Incubator, which has links to Beijing’s prestigious Tsinghua University, and Guo’An Makers Accelerator with affiliation to CITIC Guo’An group.
CBD’s Zheng says the new pilot zone is also reaching out to European and Silicon Valley innovation entities.
Financial Services
Zheng hopes the new pilot zone will find synergies with a growing financial services centre in the CBD, one of several financial hubs in mainland China.
While Beijing’s financial sector contains more regulatory bodies and administrative headquarters, Shanghai’s is more internationally focused and Shenzhen’s concentrates on southern China and Hong Kong, Tianjin’s financial sector specializes in serving bricks-and-mortar industries and industry clusters.
The pilot zone has already attracted several financial services companies to set up there, including Harvest Fund, one of the longest-running fund management companies in China, China Re Asset Management, Poly Group, China National Investment & Guaranty Company, SinoSteel and China Life.
Tianjin is launching a ‘double creativity’ pilot zone for entrepreneurship and innovation, announced by Tianjin mayor Huang Xingguo and on the instructions of China’s State Council.
