政府新闻
长江三角洲“小巨人”区域聚集了中国近三分之一创新企业 2023-06-05
China’s Yangtze River Delta region, which encompasses Shanghai and the surrounding area, is home to nearly 30 percent of the country’s ‘little giant’ companies, which are small firms with a high market share in niche sectors, strong innovative capacity and core technologies, according to a recent study.
Some 2,795 ‘little giants’ are settled in the Yangtze River Delta, and although they account for only a fraction of the total number of companies in the country, they are very active in research and development, according to a report released by Shanghai Guochuang Technology Industry Innovation and Development Center, UK professional services network Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu and Singapore’s PatSnap, a Software-as-a-Service provider.
“Although these companies make up just 0.01 percent of the number of firms in China, they account for 1.66 percent of the country’s licenses, inventions and patents, much higher than the national average,” Guochang Technology President Huang Yan told Yicai Global.
Their patent applications jumped 13 percent in 2021 from the year before, Huang said. The total number of patents owned by Shanghai’s ‘little giants’ are ahead of any other city in the country, while, on average, neighboring Suzhou is the leading city in terms of patent ownership for individual “little giants’.
Most of these small but dynamic companies in the Yangtze River Delta, which accounts for nearly a quarter of China’s economy, are engaged in science and tech industries such as manufacturing, electronic information, biomedicine, new materials as well as the Internet, Huang said.
The Yangtze River Delta provides an excellent industrial foundation for these ‘little giants,’ with plenty of support in terms of innovation, R&D and market expansion, Huang said. There is also a strong local market and plenty of international talent and foreign firms. The proportion of people who leave overseas companies to start their own businesses is high in this area, he added.
The firms’ business foci correlate strongly with the strengths of the cities where they are located, and they have contributed a lot to the upgrading of local business sectors, Huang said.
For example, there are many fintech ‘little giants’ in Shanghai, which is the financial capital of China. Jiangsu province is strong in healthcare, pharmaceuticals, new energies and new materials, so many of the innovative firms in the province work in these sectors. And those engaged in electronic information, the Internet and cultural creativity tend to gather in Zhejiang province, which has a well-developed private and digital economy.
Within the Yangtze River Delta, Shanghai has the most ‘little giants’ at over 500, followed by Ningbo and Hangzhou in Zhejiang province with more than 200 each. Over 70 percent of innovative firms in the region are located in 15 of the biggest cities.
However, they still lag far behind in terms of fundraising. Less than half have gone public on the stock market, and hardly any have chosen to list overseas. So their financing channels need to be widened, Huang said.
Source: Yicai
