A group tasked with attracting investment to Shenzhen has released a report praising Shenzhen’s business environment. The report by Invest Shenzhen praised Shenzhen’s innovative environment and low-energy consumption compared with GDP generated.
The report about the business environment in Shenzhen shows that the city has formed economic strengths and benefited from optimized industrial structure and innovation capacity, Shenzhen Special Zone Daily reported yesterday.
Invest Shenzhen has been tasked by the municipal government to attract investment. Partnering with a consulting company, Invest Shenzhen spent the past year completing the report.
The report revealed that Shenzhen’s industrial businesses are making a growing profit because of high production quality. The city’s overall industrial added value in 2014 was 650.1 billion yuan (US$101.58 billion), 8.4 percent higher than 2013. The industrial businesses’ annual revenue increased by 5.1 percent in 2014, while the total profit soared by 16.2 percent compared with 2013.
Meanwhile, the city has kept a low level of energy consumption in the past five years. In 2014, the energy used to produce 10,000 yuan of GDP decreased by 4.3 percent, while the figure has declined by 19.5 percent in the past five years. The water used to generate 10,000 yuan of GDP dropped by 8 percent in 2014, and it has been reduced by 44.7 percent in the past five years.
Shenzhen is also adjusting its economic structure by supporting promising industries such as the health industry, the marine economy and aerospace technology. Currently, the primary industry’s added value accounts for less than 0.1 percent of the city’s GDP, while the added value of the secondary and tertiary industries take up 42.7 and 57.3 percent of the city’s GDP, respectively.
The statistics show Shenzhen has developed its own industrial advantages and formed a new industrial system based on high-tech and advanced manufacturing industries and braced by modern service industry.
The researchers also conducted a survey of local entrepreneurs, who scored Shenzhen 83.6 out of 100 for an environment that encouraged innovation. Most experts and entrepreneurs being interviewed agree that the environment promoting innovation is one of the highlights of Shenzhen’s business environment.
The report shows that Shenzhen outpaced other sub-provincial cities nationwide in the number of patented inventions. In 2014, 82,254 patent applications were from Shenzhen, which means per 10,000 people in Shenzhen about 65 own a patent. That is about 13.9 times of the national average figure.
In 2014, Shenzhen had 11,639 international patent applications, almost accounting for half of the total applications in China, with its application number ranking first nationwide for the past 11 years.
Meanwhile, the city’s high-tech product output value has grown by over 30 percent for years, and the products with independent intellectual property rights take up 60.1 percent of the total output value of all high-tech products.
“Shenzhen is a city like Silicon Valley in most aspects,” said Liu Zihong, chairman of Royole Corp., a Shenzhen-based company with offices in Silicon Valley.
“It’s an immigrant city that has a high tolerance for different cultures, and the spark of diversity is the source of innovation,” he said.
Knowledge and innovation are replacing resources and capital to be the main driving powers of Shenzhen’s economy, and the supportive policies are emphasizing the whole innovation eco-system instead of backing up single innovative projects, according to the report.
Invest Shenzhen brought in 1,052 investment projects to the city by the end of 2014, while 70 percent of them are foreign-funded projects. It helped 250 projects settle down as real businesses with a total revenue of 273.9 billion, creating employment opportunities for 60,000 college graduates.
Editor: Chan
