Boss who returned to China hails progress made in Zhejiang

Jin Xing, chairman of Zhejiang Autorock, a company specializing in the research and development and production of liquid crystal auto panel boards

Having obtained permanent residency and a decent income in the Netherlands after working there for more than a decade, I decided to return to China, hoping to take research results out of the laboratories and apply them to people's daily lives.

I worked at the Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology, affiliated to the Chinese Academy of Sciences, for three years from 2011 before resigning to establish my own business.

The company was formed in Hangzhou, capital of Zhejiang province, in 2014. It is a joint venture set up by the Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology, Hangzhou Linjiang Investment Development Co and my entrepreneurial team.

I chose Zhejiang because of the widespread scientific research collaboration within the Yangtze River Delta region, the deep-rooted environment for entrepreneurship and the talent reservoir in neighboring Shanghai.

Last year, the Zhejiang government listed integrated circuitry as a key industry. The local government's forward thinking made the transformation of scientific research results easier.

Looking back on the five years of development, I believe that these features made the startup boom possible and made it difficult to be replicated elsewhere.

Fourteen domestically produced new energy vehicles were displayed at the Shanghai auto show in 2015, and the auto panel boards in seven of them were produced by my company.

To date, our auto panel boards have been used on cars produced by nine domestic manufacturers.

Our plans involve making the dashboard appear very similar to a plane cockpit, with many screens.

The plans are being researched and developed and we estimate they will take three to five years to come to fruition.