Chengdu's science and technology sector forges ahead

As one of China's new first-tier cities, Chengdu, located in southwestern China, has attracted a large number of domestic and foreign technology enterprises and professionals through continuously optimizing its science and technology innovation ecology in recent years, accumulating strong momentum for the city's industrial transformation, upgrading and high-quality development.

One of those professionals is Zhi Wei, co-founder and executive vice-president of Eson Tech. Founded in 2015, the tech startup in Chengdu is now valued at 300 million yuan ($47.09 million).

Eson Tech is a global service provider of cross-language communication solutions based on big data, cloud computing and artificial intelligence technologies.

The startup launched Yunyitong, a professional AI document translation software targeting enterprises, at the end of 2018. The software supports 38 languages, including Chinese, English, Japanese, German, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese.

"While translators usually handle 3,000-5,000 words a day, Yunyitong can translate 100,000 words a minute with an accuracy rate of more than 95 percent," said Zhi.

Compared with other translation software on the market, Yunyitong is characterized by its high accuracy in the translation of words in specialized fields, without input and typesetting, and can retain the format of the original document while translating, Zhi added.

Eson Tech has established a translation database covering more than 50 professional fields, such as engineering, medical services, law, finance and automobiles, which is equivalent to the volume of 100,000 translators for 10 years. It is used for the training and comparison of translation algorithms.

Based on its self-developed interactive deep-learning algorithm, Yunyitong can improve the translation engine according to users' usage habits, professional background and language expression style, to achieve more intelligent and accurate translation results.

Yunyitong has been used by more than 1,000 companies, including 28 from such countries as the United States, France, Australia, South Korea and Japan.

On the basis of Yunyitong, Eson Tech launched translation software for individuals this year, the users of which have exceeded 1 million.

"The rapid development of Eson Tech is inseparable from Chengdu's strong scientific and technological innovation atmosphere and the strong support of the government," Zhi said.

Chengdu is a national new-generation AI innovation and development pilot zone, attracting an array of enterprises and professionals in the field and creating a good environment for industrial development. The Chengdu government has introduced a series of policies and measures to support technology enterprises, including rent reduction and services in business expansion and financing, according to Zhi.

Zhi added that more and more college graduates choose to stay in Chengdu, and professionals from coastal areas and even returnees from overseas are willing to choose Chengdu for career development.

Eson Tech has a research and development team of more than 50 people, who are professionals from sectors including AI, computer vision, natural language processing and big data, as well as experts and senior engineers from tech companies such as Microsoft, Huawei and Alibaba.

Eson Tech is committed to developing more products by taking advantage of more cutting-edge technologies. According to Zhi, the company has recently developed video translation software, and aims to reach a total of 10 million users within three years.

Hope Senlan Science and Technology, headquartered in Chengdu, is a national high-tech enterprise specializing in the fields of energy conservation, environmental protection, new energy and intelligent equipment.

"Chengdu's policies on fostering an ecosystem for innovation and entrepreneurship and stimulating enterprises' vitality are very targeted, and government services for enterprises are very helpful," said He Jianbo, general manager of Hope Senlan.

Chengdu has been strengthening its financial support for tech companies, and has created plenty of business opportunities for enterprises by providing subsidies for participating in international industrial exhibitions, as well as organizing online and offline business negotiation events, He added.

Hope Senlan is committed to the R&D and innovation of high-performance vector control technology and system solutions, and has built up an independent intellectual property rights system comprising 105 patents and proprietary technologies.

In the context of the global response to climate change, it is increasingly important to use science and technological means to promote energy conservation and emissions reduction. Transducer products of Hope Senlan are not only widely used in new energy fields such as hydropower, wind power and green transportation, but also play an important role in the energy-saving transformation of equipment in traditional fields, according to the company.

He said the company is continuing to increase the R&D of advanced transducer products featuring higher efficiency, as part of the company's efforts to help with China's dual carbon goals of peaking carbon emissions by 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality by 2060.

To alleviate its working capital pressure in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Maccura Biotechnology applied for a special-purpose loan of 10 million yuan on May 12 that year for science and technology innovation.

Maccura received the loan at the end of that month, which helped boost the achievement transformation of the company's COVID-19 nucleic acid and COVID-19 antibody detection reagents.

The special-purpose loan for science and technology innovation is among the technology financing products created by the Chengdu science and technology bureau, which aims to help tech companies obtain credit loans in the form of intellectual property rights, talents and R&D investment.

Chengdu has built the Tianfu International Biological City, which integrates industry, innovation, talent, finance and policy advantages. It helps not only contribute to the company's R&D and innovation, but also boost the company's overall business, especially its international expansion, according to Yu Kang, an executive with Maccura.

Statistics show that in the first half of 2021, Chengdu's high-tech industry achieved an operating revenue of 585.8 billion yuan, up 27.1 percent year-on-year.

CHINA DAILY

From left: Researchers work at a laboratory of Maccura Biotechnology, based in Chengdu. Staff members work on a production line at Hope Senlan Science and Technology in Chengdu.