On Aug. 18, 2019, the Central Government unveiled a detailed guideline on supporting Shenzhen in building a pilot demonstration area of socialism with Chinese characteristics. We are publishing a series of reports on what Shenzhen is doing to implement the strategy.

Scientific and technological innovation is playing an increasingly obvious role in supporting and driving Shenzhen’s high-quality economic development, with strategic emerging industries becoming the city’s key growth engines, Shenzhen Special Zone Daily reported.

Over the past year, Shenzhen has unswervingly implemented the innovation-driven development strategy, increased investment in basic research and applied basic research, accelerated the construction of a comprehensive national science center, and built a number of first-rate scientific and technological infrastructure and research institutions.

In August last year, the total budget estimates of two major municipal-level sci-tech infrastructure projects involving brain analysis and brain simulation and synthetic biology research, were approved by the municipal development and reform commission. Total investment of the two projects exceeded 1.6 billion yuan (US$247 million).

In the past year, Shenzhen has created plans to develop world-class major sci-tech infrastructure, established an international and specialized comprehensive particle facility research institute, and started the construction of regional major sci-tech infrastructure in such fields as brain analysis and brain simulation.

Shenzhen has actively introduced major scientific and technological innovation resources.

In November 2020, the Greater Bay Area future network test and application environment (FANet) project of Pengcheng Laboratory opened its 15 key nodes in 13 cities in Guangdong Province and the Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions. It marked that “Pengcheng Cloud Network,” a large-scale scientific facility in Shenzhen, has officially begun trial operations.

Shenzhen currently has 2,693 innovation platforms, including 129 at the national level. Shenzhen has retained the top spot for the third straight year in the entrepreneurship and innovation index, according to a national report released last December.

As of the end of October 2020, Shenzhen has invested 86.5 billion yuan in expediting new infrastructure development.