Qingdao Will Build an International and Innovative City and Continue to Invest in the Development Led by Scientific and Technological Innovation

QINGDAO, China--(BUSINESS WIRE)--According to "Qingdao Five-Year Plan for Building an International and Innovative City (2022-2026)", Qingdao will focus on the two dimensions of "internationalization" and "innovation", deeply dock with the global innovation chain, industrial chain and talent chain, and further enhance the function of scientific and technological innovation source. In the future, Qingdao will strive to build a marine science city with global influence, an innovation city on intelligent manufacturing with international competitiveness, a national important city of future industries and a nationally renowned science and technology innovation corridor in the Bay Area. Qingdao’s average annual growth of R&D investment in the whole society will be more than 10%, the intensity of R&D investment will reach more than 3.2%, there will be more than 10,000 national high-tech enterprises, the output value of high-tech industries will account for 65% of the industrial output value of enterprises above the designated scale, and the total number of talents will exceed 3 million by 2026.

With the support of science and technology, Qingdao has seized the opportunities of a new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation, laying a more solid foundation for building an international innovative city. In the past decade, Qingdao's relevant indicators have experienced a significant boom: the number of high-tech enterprises has increased from 538 in 2012 to 5,554 in 2021, which is an increase of 9.3 times; the turnover of technology contracts has increased from 2.54 billion yuan to 32.01 billion yuan, which corresponds to an increase of 11.6 times; the output value of high-tech industries above designated scale has increased from 39.7% to 60.5%, which equals to an increase of 20.8 percentage points, and the R&D expenditure of the whole society has increased from 16.43 billion yuan in 2011 to 30.09 billion yuan in 2020. Qingdao has frequently ranked among the "first tier" in the national and even global scientific and technological strength evaluation lists, stabilized its status as one of the top ten science and technology innovation cities in China, and provided better proof of Qingdao's "innovation" and "internationalization".

Guided by innovation, Qingdao deepens its innovation-driven development strategy, insists on placing innovation at the core of the overall situation of modernization, and its urban innovation level has steadily risen. Basic research is the top-level logic of the scientific system, which determines fundamentally "how high we jump" and "how far we run" regarding scientific and technological innovation. Qingdao has 29 universities, more than 30 research institutes or institutions of colleges and universities stationed in Qingdao, and 9 national key laboratories, providing a solid foundation for basic research.