Chinese Delegates, California Leaders Meet in San Francisco to Discuss the Emerging Innovation Revolution in Guangzhou

Leading officials, business executives, entrepreneurs, innovators and media from San Francisco and Silicon Valley and Guangzhou gathered for interactive dialogues on the increasingly indigenous innovation taking place across the fields of artificial intelligence, social media, bio-science, fintech, virtual reality, auto tech, economic sharing platforms, intelligent equipment, robots and mobile technology in Guangzhou--and how businesses, entrepreneurs and talent can capitalize on these trends to realize new levels of development and growth across borders.

The Re-Invention of Southern China

Guangzhou is China's third-largest city and is the most important trade center and open portal hub in the country. For 60 years, this historic and culturally rich southern Chinese city has held the renowned Canton Fair, attracting nearly 200,000 enterprise representatives from all over the world to the semi-annual trade event. But today Guangzhou is rapidly become a city of the future, advancing and modernizing in ways that hold vast implications for an increasingly digitized and  globalizing economy. The new Guangzhou is a world city that pushes integration, innovation and cohesive development to help foster breakthroughs in the fields of information technology, artificial intelligence and the next generation of Internet+. In 2016, 13 of China's 50 Most Innovative Companies ranked by Fast Company were based in Guangzhou.

Guangzhou Fast Facts

• Built in 214 B.C.
• Capital of Guangdong Province, China's largest provincial economy for 28 consecutive years.
• 7,434.4 square kilometers of total area.
• 16-million population, 2.5 that of the San Francisco Bay Area, with 3 million highly educated talents.
• $2.84 billion GDP in 2016.
• 386 newly registered enterprises established per day on average - five of which are foreign-owned.
• 79 colleges and universities.
• One of the highest livability rates in China, according to the Asian Development Bank.

Guangzhou: The New Leader in Innovation

The increasingly high-tech hub hosts pioneering cross-industry technology innovators, including, among many others:

• WeChat, the social media mobile app with 889 million active monthly users that has reached a 93% adoption rate as a primary payment method for offline purchases across Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities in China.
• Ehang, an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) company that launched the world's first civil manned AV at the 2016 U.S. Consumer Elctronics Show. Ehang has received 1,000 orders of its 184 model from the American company Lung Biotechnology for rapid tranport of man-made organ transplant.
• General Electric (GE) which, following a $800 million joint investment by and the Guangzhou Development District in June, GE began construction on a new bio-tech park in the Sino-Singapore Guangzhou Knowledge City. The new park marked GE's first biotech park in Asia and aims to become the world's leading, first-class international biological, pharmaceutical and health industry base, and is expected to generate an annual output between $4 and $8 billion in the future.
• This month, Cisco also commenced operations at its first, global-leading smart city project in China. The new project focuses on smart manufacturing and cloud services and is projected to exceed $15 billion in annual output. Already, it has attracted more than 30 upstream and downstream partners that will conduct business in the city.

"Guangzhou stands at the forefront of China's opening up and development, and technological innovation is one of the three core pillars driving us forward as a progressive city and leading business center in China. Across the fields of biomedicine, artificial intelligence, speech and image recognition, robots, smart equipment, virtual reality and beyond, driven enterprises are setting up shop within the borders of our burgeoning innovation hub so that we can support them in their growth and development," said Cai Chaolin, Standing Member of CPC Guangzhou Committee and Director of 2017 Guangzhou Fortune Global Fortune Executive Committee. "Today's discussions in the Bay Area bring together leaders from a great hub of innovation in the west, and those from one of most flourishing cradles of modernization among the oriental cities so that we can share learnings, find new synergies and uncover what's next for businesses, leaders, talent and beyond."

The city is rapidly becoming an international hub of modernization and hotspot for entrepreneurship and in recent years has implemented a series of policies to foster sci-tech and industry innovation. The region's increasingly favorable policy and business environment, internationalization, marketization and legalization have attracted a large number of leading international talents, ambitious young entrepreneurs and local and multinational enterprises.

Guangzhou also features a premier sci-tech corridor that comprises 11 cluster sections primed to foster continued growth and expansion for businesses and industries. The Pazhou Internet Innovation Cluster alone is estimated to cover three million square meters within the next three to five years, with revenue production and job creation projected to reach $15.49 billion and 80,000 jobs, respectively.

High-Tech Growth

• The number of high-tech firms in the city increased ten-fold between 2015 and 2016, growing by 2,820.
• Technology financial expenditure grew from $836.43 million in 2013 to $1.67 billion in 2017,
  Aggregate area occupied by incubators nearly doubled from 2013 to 2016.
• 1,300 types of angel investment, venture capital and equity investment institutions in the city.
• 140,000 science and technology enterprises.
• 212 incubators and 139 creative spaces comprising 8.6 million square meters.
• 12 national engineering centers in biology and health with 158 key laboratories.
• 457 high-tech biology and health enterprises
  Industrial output of robot bodies was 2,287 units in 2016.

A New Policy and Financial Landscape and Benefiting Enterprises

Guangzhou's recent and pioneering "1+9" Innovation policy was designed to support enterprises over their entire life cycle, and the Guangzhou government has also developed funds and subsidies for those companies that establish in, grow and support the local innovation economy. The region's new technological system reform has already begun to improve corporate innovation capacity, the application and commercialization of technological achievement, construction of sci-tech innovation platforms, talent acquisition and financing.

Plus landmark growth in the local financial and venture capital sectors are further advancing Guangzhou into a burgeoning center for innovation investment in China. Along with a new transparent government approach that has received wide acclaim, these moves have created an even more favorable environment for entrepreneurship in the region, reinvigorated sci-tech and high-tech advancements and bolstered business growth within Guangzhou. 

A Precursor of What's to Come

The local panels in California come ahead of the Fortune Global Forum being held in Guangzhou in December. The international forum later this year will create a valuable opportunity for world leaders and CEOs of the world's largest multinational companies to discuss openness and innovation in the global economy, and the key issues facing multinational companies during this pivotal time in China and around the world.

The San Francisco events serve as early precursors to the Fortune Global Forum, giving participants the chance to engage early on with select business and government leaders from China, and help outline some of the key international topics to be discussed during this world-renowned event and the highly anticipated Fortune Brainstorm Tech Conference International 2017.

SOURCE Guangzhou News Center