Global innovation corridor in Jing'an enters next phase

Ti Gong

Jing'an District has recently made a five-year plan to fuel the development of its entrepreneurship and innovation corridor.

The corridor was included as the country's third batch of demonstration bases for mass entrepreneurship and innovation as part of an effort to propel reform, stabilize employment and enhance growth impetus and to help advance the construction of the innovation corridor. Jing'an has rolled out 20 reform policies in government service, financing, tax and talent development.

Covering 14 square kilometers, the corridor was built based on the district's "One Axis and Three Belts" layout in which the North-South Elevated Road acts as an axis and links three distinctive regional development belts – Nanjing Road W. at the southern end, Suhe Bay in the central area and areas surrounding the Middle Ring Road at the northern end.

Nanjing Road W. features the regional headquarters of various multinational companies, professional service agencies and leading co-working spaces such as WeWork, P2 and XNode, which creates a strong international business atmosphere. Suhe Bay and Suzhou Creek waterfront areas feature many Internet and human resource industries while the areas along the Middle Ring Road host a booming film industry in the Daning area and a complete big data industrial ecosystem in the Shibei High Technology Park.

Over the next few years the mission to become a high-standard demonstration base will be continued by forging a complete chain of international digital industrial clusters, gathering some top innovation platforms and fostering some technological startups with global influence.

It is predicted that by 2025 it will have grown to become a high-standard demonstration base, supporting the city's development in becoming a globally influential innovation hub.

In the following five years, it will support World Blockchain Organization, the global fintech innovation center of the United Nations Development Programme and other major international projects expected to be in progress in Jing'an as well as hosting the construction of big data facilities such as Shanghai Big Data Industrial Base and Huawei's blockchain innovation center, and accelerate the R&D of application scenarios.

The corridor will also promote cooperation among universities, communities and creative parks, construction of multi-layer innovation spaces from incubator to accelerator and hold a wide range of activities to boost academic and industrial exchanges.

So far 92 multinational companies have set regional headquarters in Jing'an, and nine of them, such as L'Oreal, Philips and Kohler, have set up innovation centers.

Jing'an has also gathered 43 reputable service providers included in the Globalization and World Cities Research Network, a third of the city's total.

They include consultancy Bain, accounting firm KPMG, advertising agency J. Walter Thompson, law firm Jones Day and bank BNP.