Innovation drives growth in Hohhot

The city aims to foster high-tech industries for better development

Hohhot, capital of the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, aims to take the lead in fostering new quality productive forces, according to He Haidong, mayor of the city.

In an exclusive interview with China Daily, he said Hohhot has the conditions to spur new quality productive forces, as it has, for example, 70 percent of the higher education institutions in Inner Mongolia, 50 percent of its academic institutes and 30 percent of new and high-tech enterprises.

The region has six pillar industrial clusters: dairy, electronic information and technology, biomedicine, new materials and equipment manufacturing, new energy, and modern chemical industries, he said.

According to the local government work report, the total revenue of the dairy industry in Hohhot exceeded 256 billion yuan ($36.5 billion) last year, up 14 percent year-on-year.

The city also ranked 15th in the country in terms of computing capacity and successfully held the China Green Computing Conference last year.

"Industrial development in Hohhot has followed a more high-end, intelligent and green path in recent years, as it is putting more attention on futuristic industries such as artificial intelligence, commercial aerospace, semiconductors and bioengineering," the mayor said.

He said the city has made efforts to introduce high-end talent, experts and academicians to work in the city, with about 100 arriving in Hohhot every year.

Meanwhile, 53,000 college graduates stayed to work in the city last year, and it hopes to attract 50,000 more this year, he said.

He said the city will offer high-quality jobs, create favorable conditions for entrepreneurship and build "youth residential communities" with high quality and low costs for college graduates so they can stay for the long term and contribute to the building of the city.

Meanwhile, the city has established funds for the development of the six pillar industries, and innovation investment funds to support the development of emerging, futuristic and innovation-driven industries, he said.

It has built a market-oriented and international business environment based on the rule of law and is actively building itself into a model city for the social credit system, the mayor said.

He said the city will also accelerate the building of a new international airport, and plans to increase the number of China-Europe and China-Central Asia freight trains this year, and boost friendly exchanges with sister cities in countries such as Mongolia, Russia and the United States.