An industrial consortium to facilitate the development of embodied intelligence in the Yangtze River Delta region was set up in late September at the annual China International Industry Fair in Shanghai. The fair attracted 3,000 companies from 28 countries and regions and showed more than 1,000 new technologies and products. The first group of companies and institutes joining the consortium includes Shanghai-based robotics company Fourier Intelligence, Standard Robots (Wuxi), new mica composite materials manufacturer Zhejiang Glory, and Wuxi-based Jiangnan University.
Cheng Peng, Party Secretary of the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Economy and Informatization, said that Shanghai has played a key role in leading the development of high-end industries such as embodied intelligence after the city positioned itself as an innovation hub. By leveraging resources from all over the world, Shanghai can help build the Yangtze River Delta region into a comprehensive demonstration and pioneering zone for embodied intelligence, he added.
Other areas of the region also have their respective strengths. Ma Xuan, Chief Researcher of the China Academy of Urban Planning and Design’s Shanghai branch, said Jiangsu has taken the lead in issuing jointly compiled academic papers, which can be largely attributed to the many well-established universities in the province. In addition, Anhui province has sped up the industrial application of innovations achieved in the lab, she said. Lu Xiongwen, Dean of the School of Management at Fudan University, said disruptive technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) are reshaping business logic. Industrial upgrading, which is resource reliant, is now more dependent on coordinated development within an ecosystem. As seen in numerous cases, coordination among companies, research institutes, and governments in the Yangtze River Delta region provides a replicable model for other parts of China. This in turn provides more momentum for China’s high-quality economic development, he said.
The Yangtze River Delta region – comprising Shanghai, and Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui provinces – has seen its leading position in China’s technological innovation become increasingly evident, according to a report released by the Chinese Academy of Science and Technology for Development (CASTED) in late September. The region accounted for over 30% of China’s research and development (R&D) expenditure, industry experts, high-value patents, and high-tech exports. Nearly half of the country’s international technology income is generated in the region, the report said. Liu Dongmei, the Academy’s Party Secretary, said coordinating technological innovation is never the job of one government department. Various industries should be included and resources efficiently directed across different administrative regions, she said. One example in the Yangtze River Delta region is the production of Tesla electric vehicles. While Shanghai provides the chips for the smart-driving technology, Jiangsu supplies the batteries, Zhejiang does the body casting, and Anhui is responsible for the final vehicle assembly. The region is home to industrial clusters of three emerging technologies – integrated circuits, biomedicine and AI. Nearly 60% of China’s IC industrial output, one-third of AI industrial output, and one-third of biomedicine are all generated in the region. The region’s GDP topped CNY33 trillion in 2024, surpassing that of Japan. Taking up just 4% of China’s total area, the region contributed nearly 25% of the country’s GDP.
Other regions have also noticed the power of coordinated technological innovation. The Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region saw its combined R&D expenditure reach CNY445.8 billion last year, according to the CASTED report. The area’s R&D expenditure intensity, or the ratio of R&D expenditure to GDP, approached 4.3%, 1.6 times the national average. Similar examples can be found in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. Guangdong province’s R&D expenditure hit CNY510 billion in 2024, topping the CNY500 billion threshold for the first time and securing its position as the largest R&D spender among all provincial-level regions for the ninth consecutive year. The Qianhai Shenzhen-Hong Kong Youth Innovation and Entrepreneur Hub, located in the western part of Shenzhen, Guangdong, is only 30 minutes drive from central Hong Kong. It has served as the first stop for many Hong Kong startups aiming to expand their footprint in the Chinese mainland. Since the hub’s establishment in 2014, a total of 1,450 startups have been nurtured there, with 1,028 of them originating in Hong Kong, Macao and other places.
The progress in the Yangtze River Delta region is reliant on the shared targets of the local governments, which are translated into coordinated development plans and co-working mechanisms. The coordinated development of the Yangtze River Delta region was elevated to a national strategy in 2018, but its inauguration in November 2019 as demonstration zone for the region’s green and integrated development was a major step. By the end of 2024, over 112 coordinated institutional innovations had been nurtured in the zone. Among those, 38 have been promoted nationwide, in areas covering ecological conservation, land management, cross-regional flow of production factors, and integrated tax collection and administration, the China Daily reports.
