Shanghai shows potential in innovation

Sunrise over Lujiazui Financial District in Shanghai's Pudong New Area. [Photo/IC]

Shanghai has taken a number of measures aimed at turning the city into a hub for scientific and technological innovation.

The city is making May a month for science through three major annual events designed to create an atmosphere of entrepreneurship and innovation.

This month, scientists were recognized for their outstanding achievements at the Shanghai Science and Technology Award Conference on May 15.

The Shanghai Science and Technology Festival, with a focus on innovation, opened with a red carpet reception for domestic and foreign scientists on May 15 and will roll out a series of activities across the city in the next 12 days.

The 2019 Pujiang Innovation Forum, featuring discussions on the future trends of technological development with industry experts at home and abroad, will be held in Shanghai from May 24 to 26.

Shanghai is committed to facilitating investment in basic scientific research, a key to improving its innovative capacity, and saw strong results last year.

In 2018, Shanghai scientists published 85 original papers in top international journals Science, Nature and Cell, accounting for 32.2 percent of the national total.

A total of 29 major scientific and technological achievements led by Shanghai won national science and technology awards, accounting for 10 percent of the country's total.

Efforts are being stepped up to construct national laboratories in Shanghai. The laser facility, a major science and technology infrastructure project and the most heavily invested project in the country to date, started construction on April 27, 2018. The facility will improve research on the micro scale after completion.

The development of the biomedical industry in the city achieved rapid growth as its total annual economic output reached 343.39 billion yuan ($49.74 billion), an increase of 4.49 percent. The manufacturing industry also saw strong growth momentum, achieving an output value of 117.66 billion yuan, an increase of 9.8 percent, which is higher than the growth rate of the city's strategic emerging industries.

In the first quarter of this year, the number of technical contracts and turnover of municipal research institutes increased significantly.

The Shanghai Academy of Agricultural Sciences has signed 35 technical contracts alone, a year-on-year increase of 106 percent, with a total value of 2.08 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 288 percent. The academy's Director Jiang Shuhong attributed the growth to Shanghai's reform policies issued in February 2019.

To promote technological innovation, the policy proposes to give researchers ownership and long-term usage rights of their professional scientific and technological achievements, a reform measure on state-owned technology achievements, which gives new hope and great incentive to researchers.