Editor's note: Sophie Chen joined Ernst & Young (EY) in 1994 and is now the deputy chief accountant of EY Hua Ming. In addition, she served as a deputy to the 15th People's Congress of Beijing and 16th People's Congress of Dongcheng District, Beijing. The article reflects the author's opinions, and not necessarily the views of CGTN. 

Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), innovation has been placed at the core of China's overall development as the primary driving force for development under the leadership of the CPC Central Committee with Xi Jinping at its core. With the in-depth implementation of innovation-driven development strategy, China accelerated its pace again on science and technology development during the 13th Five-Year Plan period, which contributed to the rapid growth of the Chinese economy.

In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, China became the only major economy in the world to achieve positive growth in 2020. In 2020, IPOs in the A-share market raised 470.7 billion yuan in total funds, accounting for 45 percent of the global IPO proceeds. In particular, the Science and Technology Innovation Board (STAR) boasted an outstanding performance, with a reflection of China's remarkable progress in scientific and technological innovation over the past few years.

In terms of geographic locations, nearly half of companies listed on STAR came from the Yangtze River Delta region, with Shanghai as the core, followed by Beijing, seeing stronger growth momentum in 2020 compared with previous years. As such, these two regions leave others behind in scientific and technological innovation.

Businesses are passionate about innovation in the Yangtze River Delta Urban Agglomeration (YRDUA) as a developed market, where private economy is regarded as a typical and representative case of market-driven innovation in terms of model innovation, technology innovation and management innovation. As for model innovation, against the backdrop of globalization and rapid development of the internet, the Internet Plus mode has advanced rapidly especially in the YRDUA. For example, private economy develops well in Hangzhou with a flexible business and responsive model.

New types of industry and new economy offer the key to innovation, and industries with disruptive business models have paved the path for model innovation in Hangzhou. As for technological innovation, industrial chains and large-scale teams have been built up in a wide range of sectors in the Yangtze River Delta region, including electronic information, new energy, biomedicine, equipment manufacturing, automobile and spare parts industries, making it an ideal place for innovative industries to put down roots ready for rapid growth. As such, the region is leading in accelerating technological innovation-driven economic transformation and upgrade. As for management innovation, businesses in the YRDUA are driving economic transformation and upgrade by injecting fresh vitality through management innovation.

As the capital of China, Beijing is positioned to become a national and international center of science and technology innovation. Firstly, as the center of national scientific and technological innovation resources, Beijing boasts the best scientific research institutes and educational institutions established under China's traditional system. It enjoys advantages over other provinces, autonomous regions and cities in terms of scientific and technological innovation resources. Statistics from Beijing Municipal Commission of Science and Technology show that Beijing has more than 400,000 R&D personnel, and its investment in research and development leads the world with a GDP contribution of about 6 percent. According to the Global Innovation Index 2020, Beijing continued to rank top in terms of the number of articles published in scientific journals, with more than 240,000 publications.

Also, Beijing led the world in PCT applications, with over 25,000 applications filed in Beijing, representing 2.4 percent of the total PCT applications. Secondly, Beijing is a national leader in scientific and technological innovation. Take Zhongguancun as an example. Since the reform and opening-up, the State Council has made five major decisions on Zhongguancun, each of which has given rise to policy innovation, institutional innovation and technological innovation. In Beijing’s development plan, with the construction of "three cities and one district" as priority, Zhongguancun Science City is based on compounds, institutions and universities, Huairou Science City takes large scientific devices and scientific research infrastructure as its base while the Future Science City is based on research and development centers in large enterprises. Scientific and technological innovation focuses on original innovation and enhancing capability and spillovers in basic research.

According to the proposal of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on formulating the 14th Five-Year Plan for national economic and social development and the long-term goals for the year 2035, released after the fifth Plenary Session of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, innovation should be taken as the core in China's modernization drive, and self-reliance and self-improvement in science and technology should be given top priority as a strategic support role. We notice that the proposals released by local governments call for greater efforts in scientific and technological innovation to deliver breakthroughs to address bottlenecks.

For example, Shanghai proposes to accelerate its pace to build national technology innovation centers, lead and engage in major international scientific plans and projects, strengthen the proactive research in significant issues and discipline construction in the basic courses, create achievements in basic research and applied basic research, introduce an open competition mechanism to select the best candidates to lead key research projects, and achieve breakthroughs in key and core technologies.

Beijing proposes to vigorously develop strategic emerging industries including integrated circuits, new energy and intelligent connected vehicles, medicine and health care and new materials, proactively develop future industries including quantum information, artificial intelligence, industrial internet, satellite internet and robots, and develop new technologies, new products, new type of industries and new models.

Looking forward, the global market will experience a more intense competition for new economy unicorns in 2021. We have great confidence that technological innovation will lead the future economic development and enhance China's global competitiveness.