It can’t just be the “Yangtze River Delta”, the Yangtze River Delta

"Enterprises in the Yangtze River Delta must be ambitious and provide the world with a second option in the field of multi-modal large models." said Liu Qingfeng, chairman of iFlytek Co., Ltd.

On June 6, at the Sixth Yangtze River Delta Integrated Development High-Level Forum held in Wenzhou, Zhejiang, the first batch of 12 Yangtze River Delta Innovation Consortiums was established, including the Yangtze River Delta Multimodal Large Model Innovation Consortium.

The day before, the Yangtze River Delta Entrepreneurs Alliance meeting was held. Liu Qingfeng spoke as the co-chairman of the Yangtze River Delta Entrepreneurs Alliance. He temporarily put aside the content he had prepared in advance and spoke for about 30 minutes without script. At the end of his speech, he said, “The Yangtze River Delta’s new productive forces should meet two very important criteria: to win a place for China in key strategic areas and gain global voice and influence; to become a global leader in original core technologies. Represents China’s strongest innovation force.”

In November 2018, the integration of the Yangtze River Delta was elevated to a national strategy and has now entered its "second five years". This is a new time point, and people naturally have many new expectations for the development of the Yangtze River Delta. The integration of the Yangtze River Delta not only serves to improve regional energy levels, but also becomes an "engine" to stimulate growth potential and development vitality in a wider range of areas.

The reason why Liu Qingfeng can speak such bold words is that the Yangtze River Delta Entrepreneur Alliance is one of his sources of confidence.

"It used to be difficult to work alone, but now we are a system." On May 6 last year, iFlytek officially released the Spark model. On June 27 this year, version 4.0 of the Spark model will be officially released, fully benchmarking against GPT- The current best level of 4Turbo. "Every line of code is written by oneself, and every data is cleaned by oneself. Only when it is completely domestically produced can it occupy a place on important tracks."

The Yangtze River Delta has provided strong support for the iteration and application of Spark technology: the "General Artificial Intelligence Evaluation System" formulated and released by the Yangtze River Delta Artificial Intelligence Industry Chain Alliance and others provides a scientific and systematic evaluation method; last year, the Yangtze River Delta Entrepreneur Alliance released the "General Artificial Intelligence Evaluation System" in Hefei. "Hefei Declaration on General Artificial Intelligence" has formed a consensus on focusing on source technological innovation, adhering to independence and controllability, focusing on ethics and humanities, and developing industrial ecology; Anhui Province collaborates with Shanghai Pujiang Laboratory, Zhejiang Zhijiang Laboratory, etc. to tackle "stuck neck" technologies... …

Now, as the Yangtze River Delta Entrepreneur Alliance has been established for four years, strictly speaking, the member units are no longer just Yangtze River Delta enterprises.

Wang Wenzhi, the developer of colorful upland rice and chairman of Zhonggao Yike Seed Industry Co., Ltd., speaks with a distinctive northern accent. The company is headquartered in Beijing and has operations in Shandong, Hubei and other places. In October 2022, after the local government attracted investment, Zhonggao Yike settled in Quzhou, Zhejiang to build a planting base and processing plants.

Almost at the same time he settled in Quzhou, Wang Wenzhi was invited to join the Yangtze River Delta Entrepreneur Alliance. “I feel like I have found an organization.” When Wang Wenzhi first arrived, he was unable to cope with many difficulties. “We are good at seed research and development, marketing and media publicity. The work really can’t be done.” The Yangtze River Delta Entrepreneur Alliance allows various member units to unite to show their strengths and play their roles.

After this meeting, Jiang Dongliang, chairman of Yi'an Holdings Co., Ltd., has a new identity-the founder of the Yangtze River Delta Green and Low-carbon Industrial Chain Alliance. He was full of confidence as the initiator, "I have a big advantage. I am concurrently the president of the Jiangsu Provincial Installation Association and the president of the Jiangsu Provincial Ecological and Environmental Protection Technology Industry Chamber of Commerce. In addition, Yixing City, Jiangsu Province has also established Green and Low-Carbon Industry Association, we have a local industry foundation.”

Since there are already mature industry associations, why should we initiate the establishment of a new Yangtze River Delta Industrial Chain Alliance? Jiang Dongliang said: "The platform of the Yangtze River Delta is higher, and everyone acknowledges it." In his existing "circle of friends" of the association, there are thousands of relevant member companies. These companies are not only from the Yangtze River Delta, but are distributed across the country. Jiang Dongliang plans to use The platform of the Entrepreneur Alliance connects the forces of the Yangtze River Delta and national resources through the industrial chain alliance to achieve common development.

This is an important change, which shows that the influence of the Yangtze River Delta Entrepreneur Alliance continues to expand, and its radiation scope has long exceeded the Yangtze River Delta.

Over the past four years, the Yangtze River Delta Entrepreneur Alliance has formed 14 industrial chain alliances in three batches, covering high-end medical equipment, software and information services, digital health, artificial intelligence, biomedicine and other fields, bringing together the Yangtze River Delta region's advantageous industrial forces. This time, the Yangtze River Delta Entrepreneurs Alliance awarded licenses to five newly established industrial chain alliances, expanding the number of alliance members to 19.

It is foreseeable that the Yangtze River Delta Industrial Chain Alliance will serve more enterprises, gather forces and collaborate in a wider range of fields, and "support" technological innovation practices to go further and deeper.

Huang Sisi, a member of Wenzhou's investment promotion team in Hangzhou, returned to Wenzhou in the past two days and served as a conference staff to provide conference services to the guests. This arrangement hides a "little thought" - to establish communication channels with entrepreneurs through one-to-one service, understand what entrepreneurs need and think, and guide companies interested in investing in Wenzhou to stay in Wenzhou.

In the past two days, Huang Sisi was so busy that she was so busy saying hello, adding WeChat messages, and making recommendations. There were more than a dozen "target" entrepreneurs in her friend list. "I come from Cangnan County. In recent years, wind energy, electric energy, nuclear energy and other new energy tracks have developed rapidly in the county. I hope to attract relevant companies to Cangnan to further improve the industrial chain layout."

The momentum of Wenzhou's development can be felt from this ordinary investment recruiter. Before the meeting, the guests attending the meeting had a lot of discussions about the location of the meeting. From a geographical perspective, Wenzhou is located at the southernmost tip of the Yangtze River Delta. Why is this conference held in Wenzhou? "Momentum" may be the answer.

Wenzhou is the pioneer area of ​​China's reform and opening up. More than 2.5 million Wenzhou people spread across the country and around the world have created an economy nearly twice the size of the local economy, forming two million-dollar business entities inside and outside the city. 830,000 overseas Chinese businessmen from Wenzhou have worked hard to around the world. Wenzhou is an important birthplace of China's private economy. Today, the private economy accounts for more than 90% in various fields such as industrial added value, taxation, and employment. In the past few years, in the face of the impact of the epidemic and complex external situations, Wenzhou's private economic development has been under pressure but has been resilient.

As Zhang Wenjie, Deputy Secretary of the Municipal Party Committee and Mayor of Wenzhou, said, "Wenzhou has a unique mission in regional development, plays an important role in the new development pattern, and coexists and prospers with the development of the Yangtze River Delta."

The 2023 World Young Scientists Summit opened at the Ouhai Olympic Sports Center. Photo by Chen Xiang

When people from the Yangtze River Delta meet in Wenzhou, they come here because of the "momentum". Since November 2018, the integration of the Yangtze River Delta has been elevated to a national strategy and has now entered its "second five years". With Wenzhou as a new starting point, the development momentum of the Yangtze River Delta has not diminished, and the road for the future has been paved, and it will continue to be deeper and more solid.

In the Yangtze River Delta, there are not many low-hanging fruits left. We have to wade through the shallow waters as much as possible. There are still many hard bones to gnaw on for reform in key areas. During the meeting, issues such as innovating systems and mechanisms and breaking down administrative barriers became hot topics and were repeatedly mentioned and discussed.

"The level of hard connectivity has improved. If soft connectivity cannot improve, it will be difficult to reflect the level of integration and release the market potential." Wang Yiming, vice chairman of the China Center for International Economic Exchanges, pointed out many real problems: The Yangtze River Delta must serve the whole country To establish a unified large market, the construction of the basic market system is still imperfect and uncoordinated, especially in the fields of market access and fair competition. There are shortcomings; to promote regional market integration to achieve greater breakthroughs, the core is the integration of factor markets, capital, Talents and various standards must be unified and recognized by each other to facilitate flow.

At the high-level forum, the signing ceremony of the Yangtze River Delta Integrated Development Project was held. Photo by Wang Jianlong and Xu Yan

"This is the first time that cross-regional and cross-disciplinary basic research cooperation has been proposed at a high-level forum." Chen Wen, a researcher at the Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences and an expert in decision-making consulting for the integrated development of the Yangtze River Delta, said that after seeing the signing of the agreement by three provinces and one city She was very pleasantly surprised by the “framework agreement on strengthening basic research cooperation.” “We look forward to the Yangtze River Delta cultivating new productive forces with distinctive functions in a regional environment supported by integrated innovation support and integrated factor flow according to local conditions, and jointly promote sustainable development.” Strong and dynamic growth in quality.”

At the forum, the Yangtze River Delta “Belt and Road” High-Quality Development Promotion Association was officially unveiled. The first batch of 12 Yangtze River Delta cross-regional innovation consortiums were established. Three provinces and one city in the Yangtze River Delta joined hands to sign ten Yangtze River Delta regional cooperation projects. The projects involved rail transit, Talent work, technology finance, etc., covering areas including unified market construction, basic research cooperation, AI scenario joint innovation, etc.