Business incubation

As of 2015, the city of Guangzhou had 119 technology business incubators, among which 16 are of national level (including two national-level university science parks), four are pilot internship bases for undergraduate technology entrepreneurship, 13 are of provincial level and 25 are of municipal level. Occupying a total area of 6.5 million square meters, the incubators have helped create 95,000 jobs.

Guangzhou has established an incubator policy system which has boosted the establishment of a service system for innovation and entrepreneurship incubation of small and medium-sized enterprises. The incubators have attracted more than 700 incubation projects, 4,000 enterprises under incubation and over 900 high-growth enterprises.

Eighty-eight of the 119 technology business incubators are privately run, accounting for 74 percent of the total number. Seven of the 16 national-level incubators are privately run, accounting for 44 percent. Four of the newly identified incubators of national (provincial) level are privately run. The newly identified eight municipal incubators and newly added 34 incubators are all private institutions.

Guangzhou has been giving full play to the advantages of its resources and exploring new modes such as endogenous, epitaxial, cooperative and investment-led incubation. Dream Future, by encouraging employees to conduct technological innovation and entrepreneurship, has hatched 12 subsidiaries; Sun Yat-sen University Daan Gene Co Ltd provides services on production research and development, sales channels, angel investment and other services and has incubated 106 companies; Ink Time Maker Space provides entrepreneurship teams with technology sharing and support in the fields of remote sensing and optics relying on the public technology service platform of Guangzhou Optoelectronics Technology Business Incubator, and has gathered and incubated 10 enterprises; Zhongda Innovation Valley and Chuangda Accelerator have set up an incubation service system providing sites, entrepreneurship training and capital investment.

In 2015 alone, the city had 326 enterprises graduating from incubators with the cumulative number in excess of 2,000, and added 70 to the total number of new high-tech enterprises of 398. The incubators introduced 57 talents under the Thousand Talents Program and have 39 science-and-technology enterprises listed on the National Equities Exchange and Quotation, China's third national equity exchange.