To gain experience in trial production of higher-level reform and opening up, Pudong leads the construction of enterprises, industries, and levels in the area for two years
On July 7th, in Beijing, a 4-day exhibition focused on international advanced new materials was about to come to an end, and people gathered in front of a Shanghai Pudong enterprise booth had no intention of dispersing.
The company's name is Rongrong New Materials, and the materials it produces look like ordinary cotton blankets. However, when one side is roasted at 1400 ℃, the other side can be directly touched with bare hands, which can be called a "miracle".
Outsiders watch the excitement. However, the domestic and foreign exhibitors present know that this is an internationally recognized high-temperature resistant new generation of main materials, which can be widely used in fields such as aerospace, metallurgy, and chemical engineering. It is worth mentioning that Rongrong New Materials, which only built its factory in Pudong at the end of last year, has broken through the bottleneck of continuous industrial production of alumina fibers in China, making China the third country in the world, after Japan and the United States, to have the capacity for mass production of such products.
July 15th this year marks the second anniversary of the release of the Opinions of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council on Supporting the High level Reform and Opening up of Pudong New Area to Build a Leading Zone for Socialist Modernization Construction. If the outside world is not yet very familiar with what the "leading zone" should do and what is being done, then Rongrong New Materials may be an observation incision.
Centered around the construction of "leading areas," the central government has endowed Shanghai Pudong with a comprehensive strategic positioning in areas such as reform and opening up, independent innovation, functional allocation, expanding domestic demand, and urban governance. Over the past two years, Pudong New Area has continued to advance into a deep reform zone, providing comprehensive reform support for various hardcore industries and high-end technologies, creating an open and dynamic market environment, and making more "Rongrong New Materials" a new development momentum for the city and even the country.
The government and market work together to break through the situation
Last year, Shanghai was approved with a total of 4 domestically produced Class 1 innovative drugs, ranking first in the country. Three of them come from Zhangjiang, Pudong, which is known as the "Chinese Medicine Valley" in the industry.
Zhangjiang has been making medicine for some years, and the relevant talents, technological reserves, and industrial chain are all well-established and mature. However, the innovative development of the biopharmaceutical industry is the most challenging for a local environment: insufficient capital, presence of land carriers, untimely policy breakthroughs, and insufficient market space... It can be said that to meet the vigorous growth of new drugs, systematic support is needed behind the scenes.
In the two years since the construction of the "Leading Zone", several things have been done: at the end of last year, the "Three Year Action Plan for Expanding and Improving the Quality of Zhangjiang Science City" was announced to the public. The plan is clear: Zhangjiang integrates the spatial resources of 11 streets and towns on the basis of the original 95 square kilometer Science City urban planning, and formulates a 220 square kilometer urban plan.
How do you understand? Simply put, the market knows that in today's Zhangjiang, land is becoming increasingly valuable, and business and production costs are increasing. After the expansion of the area, Zhangjiang's policies and services have been extended to the surrounding areas with spatial conditions, truly realizing the line that Pudong cadres continue to promote to the outside world: "Good projects do not lack land.".
The effectiveness of Zhangjiang's expansion has been demonstrated: Shengsi Biotechnology, which holds four innovative hemophilia drugs, recently established a production base in the surrounding area of Zhangjiang. Since then, the entire innovative pharmaceutical industry chain of the enterprise's "early research pilot production sales" has been established in Pudong. Zhoupu Town has retained Yangtze River Pharmaceutical and has taken on the spillover achievements of Zhangjiang's biopharmaceutical industry nearby. As the "east gate" of Zhangjiang Science City, the Heqing Industrial Park has built the Zhangjiang Medical Device Industry Base through resource integration. Now, a group of enterprises such as Rendu Biology, Toujing Life, InnoWay, and Ruikeen have landed.
As is well known, technological innovation is a matter of burning money. Where does the money come from when the land is here? Especially in the concept validation stage of achievement transformation, capital often avoids high risks and uncertainties. If Pudong wants to leverage "patient" capital, it must play a leading role.
Last September, Pudong newly established the Leading Zone Industrial Development Fund, with a total investment of 5 billion yuan. This capital channel has a clear purpose and focuses on four major functions: technological innovation, industrial development, functional platforms, and investment promotion. Under the Leading Zone Fund, there are also three major industry guidance master funds, including the National Yangtze River Delta Phase II Guidance Master Fund, as well as the recently launched Haitong Securities and Guotai Junan Industry Guidance Master Fund. The total initial scale of the three leading parent funds exceeds 15 billion yuan, and the total subscribed capital of the leading area funds is 3.3 billion yuan. According to preliminary estimates, it is possible to attract a sub fund group of about 100 billion yuan to pay attention to Pudong in the next three years.
Not long ago, multiple departments in Pudong jointly launched a set of "combination fists" for medical industry integration, including establishing an innovation platform, establishing industry alliances in which medical institutions and related enterprises participate, and also releasing a number of policies. This actually provides another resource support for the real economy. Many companies engaged in cell and gene therapy have reported that China started this industry sector not later than foreign countries, and its development stage is also quite advanced, with advantages in catching up with the win. However, the difficulty lies in insufficient collaboration with hospitals. Pudong's strong promotion of medical industry integration is precisely breaking through the industry as a whole.
What people are looking forward to seeing in the "leading zone" is also the joint efforts of the government and the market to break through more industries.
Deeper integration into global governance
This year marks the 45th anniversary of reform and opening up, the 10th anniversary of the Third Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, and the 10th anniversary of the establishment of the Shanghai Pilot Free Trade Zone. At this new moment of profound reshaping of the global economic and trade landscape, China has proposed to join high standard economic and trade agreements such as the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement and the Digital Economy Partnership Agreement, striving to integrate more deeply into global governance and participate in rule building.
For Pudong, which has gone through 33 years of development and opening up, representing China in global competition and taking the lead in exploring a shift from factor oriented opening to institutional oriented opening, it not only has a top-down strategic requirement, but also has sufficient historical accumulation and practical conditions——
The Shanghai Pilot Free Trade Zone is the starting point for China to further deepen reform and opening up and promote its free trade strategy. Over the past decade, the negative list of free trade zones has been continuously reduced, and measures to expand and open up the service and manufacturing industries have continued to increase. A large number of important reform achievements have been promoted nationwide. It can be said that after these 10 years, Pudong has a better foundation to connect with global economic and trade rules.
Not long ago, the main leaders of Pudong New Area further proposed that the leading area should take the lead in piloting international high standard economic and trade rules such as CPTPP and DEPA, especially in areas such as investment access, trade in goods and services, financial openness, digital trade, offshore trade, intellectual property protection, etc., and implement greater pressure tests to "take the lead in connecting with international high standard economic and trade rules and systems nationwide, and provide experience.".
Taking offshore trade as an example, this is a highly valued trade model in current international trade. However, for government regulatory agencies, relaxing the implementation of offshore trade may bring considerable challenges. The most important issue is the difficulty of foreign exchange supervision. In 2019, Shanghai established the "White List of Recommended Enterprises for Goods Transfer Trading", providing important support for multinational corporations to carry out offshore trade at their headquarters. Subsequently, the Shanghai Pilot Free Trade Zone explored the launch of the "Offshore Connect" platform, supported by big data, integrating overseas customs declaration data, international shipping data, and port loading and unloading data to provide commercial banks with verification services for enterprise offshore resale business, in order to judge the authenticity of offshore trade behavior and to some extent solve the problem of difficult supervision of offshore trade business.
Similar measures to promote opening up to the outside world have been continuously emerging in the two years since the start of the leading zone. Establish Southeast Asia and East Asia sub centers of the "the Belt and Road" International Cooperation Center for Technology Exchange; The Yangshan Special Comprehensive Bonded Zone has pioneered the integrated supervision model of "one company, two places"... A more open regional ecology cannot be separated from more open institutional arrangements. At the fourth plenary session of the fifth district committee of Pudong New Area held on July 11th, Pudong clarified its key work arrangements for the second half of the year, further focusing on six aspects: goods trade, service trade, temporary entry of business personnel, digital trade, business environment, and risk prevention and control, accelerating the implementation of pilot measures to benefit the global market faster.
Improving quality and efficiency for innovative development
On the east bank of the Huangpu River, it is the anchorage of Shanghai Metropolitan Yacht Company's yachts. In the past, the main business of enterprises was water tourism. If they wanted to involve catering, performances, etc., they had to apply for industry licenses separately. The enterprises were not interested, and investors lacked confidence.
At the end of last year, the Leading Zone took the lead in implementing the "One Card Pass" reform in the cultural, sports and tourism industry, focusing on approval. A certificate covers 31 approval items such as homestays, swimming, bookstores, rock climbing, galleries, etc. This means that as long as the business entity operates within these 31 business scopes, it is no longer restricted by industry regulatory authorities, and the space for imagining business formats suddenly expands.
Since the construction of the leading area, Pudong has explored and implemented a new batch of commercial system reforms, such as the market entity registration confirmation system, the market admission commitment system, the commitment system cancellation, and mandatory cancellation. It has also pioneered reforms such as the "one certificate for cultural, sports, and tourism" and the "two certificates in one for environmental impact assessment and pollution discharge". It has also launched the first local code standard system for ship supplied material products in the country, and has taken the lead in replacing administrative compliance certificates with enterprise credit information reports, which not only loosens the market but also expands the depth of reform.
Unmanned intelligent connected vehicles are a new industry that deeply integrates the automotive industry and artificial intelligence technology. Relying on the local legislative power granted by the central government to the leading area, Pudong has taken the lead in formulating the "Pudong New Area Promotion of Innovative Application of Intelligent Connected Vehicles without Drivers" and related "Implementation Rules", allowing the industry to enter a new stage of development with legal basis.
At the 2023 World Artificial Intelligence Conference on July 8th, 15 vehicles from Baidu Zhixing, AutoX Antu, and Xiaoma Zhixing were awarded the first batch of unmanned intelligent connected vehicle road test licenses in Pudong New Area, truly accelerating the commercialization of autonomous driving enterprises in China.
Actively utilizing legislative authorization, 16 Pudong New Area regulations, 2 local regulations, and 16 management measures have been formulated and introduced in the past two years. This has led the district to initially build a legal guarantee system that is compatible with bold experimentation, bold innovation, and independent reform. The government has truly played a role in supply and demand coordination, force organization, platform building, and policy supply in strategic, essential, and development areas, enabling innovation and development to improve quality and efficiency.
This year is a crucial year for the reform of Pudong. Continuously promoting the construction of leading areas, Pudong has proposed to pay more attention to the integration of reform systems, planning and designing reforms from the entire process of development, the entire chain of industrial development, and the entire life cycle of enterprise development. Focusing on "doing one thing", it promotes coordinated decentralization, management and linkage services among various departments and fields, and carries out overall institutional innovation in the industry based on "strengthening one industry". At present, in order to better solve the problems of unclear integration effects and scattered reform efforts in previous reforms, Pudong New Area actively implements comprehensive reform pilot projects and is making every effort to promote the implementation of the first batch of authorized matters within the year.
