SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY ACHIEVEMENTS PUTTING REGION ON THE MAP

INNOVATION CENTER

Changsha has ranked eighth nationally in terms of its ability for innovation for two consecutive years. There are 4,142 high-tech enterprises in the city and the added value of high-tech industries has increased by more than 10 percent annually. In the past five years, the transaction volume of technology contracts for the transformation of scientific and technological achievements has increased by 13 times. As a center of science and technology innovation, Changsha's high-end achievements are impressive since China began reform and opening-up in the late 1970s. For example, there is the "super rice" cultivated by the team led by Yuan Longping, who was known as the father of hybrid rice; the Tianhe No 1, which has a computing power of 1,372 trillion operations per second, developed by the National Supercomputing Center in Changsha; and the high-performance carbon materials developed by Huang Boyun, the former president of Central South University.

Changsha, capital of Central China's Hunan province, is moving forward with the establishment of an international scientific and technological innovation center. It has made a series of cutting-edge achievements in such sectors as engineering machinery, mobile internet, supercomputers and intelligent-connected vehicles.

The use of ICVs, for example, has become part of residents' lives. For example, hailing a self-driving taxi on a mobile app.

Changsha is one of the leaders in developing the ICV sector in China. On Jan 29, the city was approved to build a national ICV quality supervision and inspection center.

It was the third State-level license Changsha obtained in the field of ICVs. The other two are related to a testing zone and a demonstration zone for boosting industrial development.

Official statistics show that about 2,000 buses in Changsha have been replaced by intelligent and connected ones, increasing commuting efficiency by more than 30 percent.

Moreover, 5G technologies are gradually playing a leading role in the "smart city". Companies in logistics, transportation, videos, cultural innovation and other fields have sped up the layout of 5G construction. Distinctive 5G application scenarios are emerging in Changsha, covering industrial internet, intelligent manufacturing, artificial intelligence and safe production.

In 2020, Changsha established more than 30,000 5G base stations and won the Digital Transformation Award granted by the Smart City Expo World Congress, one of the world's highest-level and largest smart city summits.

Innovation has been the largest source of Changsha's rapid development. In combating the COVID-19 pandemic, Sansure Biotech, a Changsha-based company, has become a medical pioneer with its innovative genetic technologies.

The company independently developed a fast COVID-19 nucleic acid testing system, iPonatic, and released it in July last year. The system does not require a professional laboratory and gives a test result between 15-45 minutes. Previously, people had to wait several hours for results.

The company has also made important contributions to global pandemic prevention and control by exporting self-developed portable virus detection devices to Africa and other countries and regions. So far, the COVID-19 nucleic acid test reagent and analyzer developed by the company has been used in more than 160 countries and regions.

In addition to biotech, Changsha also serves as a magnet for software companies. It is now home to more than 30,000 such companies including Xiangjiang Kunpeng and China Software Developer Network, which is the country's largest programmers' website.

In April last year, the first Hunan-made Xiangjiang Kunpeng server rolled of the production line. Its sales volume reached nearly 22 million yuan ($3.4 million) within a month.

As for the traditional manufacturing sector, the combination of the internet and engineering machinery has led to a new ecology of the industry.

At the Sany Heavy Industry's No 18 plant－one of the largest intelligent manufacturing workshops in Asia－robots can finish assembling a pump truck in an hour at top speed.

The construction equipment manufacturer boasts China's largest industrial internet platform. It connects more than 600,000 devices of the company from all over the country.

Equipment manufacturing is an advantageous industry in Changsha. Last month, a local pharmaceutical equipment manufacturer, Truking Technology, together with its German partner, Romaco, released their latest tech achievement: the Macofar E production line.

The pharmaceutical production line was developed in line with European standards and meets the requirements of a world-class and innovative product in terms of appearance, technical indicators and manufacturing, said Tang Yue, chairman and CEO of Truking.

"In the past, people used to talk about importing US and European technologies into China. But now we have changed the history and exported Chinese technologies to those countries during the cooperation," Tang said. "It has given Chinese engineers the confidence that as long as we work hard, we can develop world-class technologies and products," he added.

As of now, Changsha has formed seven industrial clusters, each worth 100 billion yuan and has 4,100 high-tech companies. It ranked eighth in terms of innovation capacity among 78 innovation-oriented cites in China last year.

In the next three years, Changsha will improve its overall independent innovation capability through six major actions. It also plans to become a regional sci-tech innovation center by 2025, according to the city government.