Town-level characteristic industrial parks in Shanghai’s Pudong New Area have demonstrated huge potential over the years for further development and are advancing toward a promising future.

Several towns on the border of Pudong are brewing a new industrial revolution with their vast lands, providing a solution to the problem of the lack of space that restricts the further development of Pudong's industries.

Relying on their own industrial advantages and resource endowments, the town-level characteristic industrial parks undertake the spillover of resources from science and technology brands like Zhangjiang to gather Pudong's industrial resources.

As a strategically reserved space of Pudong, a group of town-level characteristic industrial parks located in suburbs undertake the mission of the industrial extension and expansion and the optimization and adjustment of a spatial layout, promote the accumulation of Pudong's industrial ecological resources and the concentration, and the integration of core advantageous industries, making contributions to creating world-class industrial clusters.

Representatives among them include Yunxi Technology Park, which features software and Internet Plus, Smart Maiwan which features the online new economy, Caolu Industrial Park which features integrated circuit equipment, and Laogang Carbon Cycle Industrial Park which features carbon cycle industry.

Sanlin Yunxi Technology Park: Aiming to become "smart industry community"

In Pudong’s Sanlin town, which is located in the central hinterland of Shanghai, the tentacles of the traffic lines have not yet arrived, and the crowd of people in the city comes to an abrupt end here. However, Sanlin town is seen as a bridgehead in the western section of Pudong, and a moat to embrace the overflow of corporate resources from Pudong’s Zhangjiang.

From the perspective of industry-city integration, Sanlin is also a town with a large population of more than 400,000, which has formed a talent pool. So it has both geographical advantages and talent resources.

Yunxi Technology Park in Sanlin is an important part of Shanghai Pudong Software Park. Pudong Software Park, which was established in 1992, originated from the cooperation agreement between the former Ministry of Machinery and Electronics Industry and the Shanghai Municipal People's Government. As a model of "ministry-city cooperation", it is behind China's national strategy to vigorously develop the software and information service industry.

In recent years, Yunxi Technology Park has adhered to the direction of transforming itself into a "smart industry community", and has made every effort to develop the Internet Plus new economic form. The park has initially formed a three-dimensional digital industrial system that is centered on the information technology application innovation industry and is supported by the online new economy and industrial internet.

Yunxi Technology Park focuses on the key layout of core links of industries while deploying emerging fields of the software information service industry. The leading industries of the park cover integrated circuits, the mobile internet, digital culture, financial technology, artificial intelligence, intelligent manufacturing and information security, and their role of demonstration is becoming increasingly prominent. It has established a development mechanism with leading enterprises as its core and it combines production, education and research, and has formed a demand-driven development model that highlights innovative applications. 

Yunxi Technology Park also coordinates with other parts of Pudong. The Qiantan Business District adjacent to Sanlin is expected to provide a strong impetus for the development of the park.

The central activity area of Qiantan is positioned as an area for headquarters business. It has attracted many corporate headquarters from different industries and has become an important growth driver for the tertiary industry in Pudong. Among them, the technology, media, and telecom (TMT) industry is one of the key industries that Qiantan is developing.

Based on new media, TMT connects IT companies and telecommunications companies. It is highly compatible with the Internet Plus and three-dimensional digital industry system that Yunxi Technology Park is developing.

The Qiantan area has formed an economical headquarters effect, which can drive the economic development of the surrounding areas through the functional radiative chain of "headquarters-manufacturing bases". Relying on a sound industrial development foundation and abundant carrier space, Yunxi Technology Park will undertake the spillover effect of the development of Qiantan’s headquarters economy, and highly interact with Qiantan in the manufacturing field to promote the implementation of TMT and related manufacturing links nearby, and realize the synergistic agglomeration of industries.

Qutoutiao Inc is also located in Pudong Software Park. Qutiaotiao is a content information APP developed by Shanghai Jifen Culture Communication Co Ltd and is positioned as a one-stop pan-entertainment content platform. It was officially launched in June 2016 and has been developing rapidly by relying on differentiated positioning, a unique customer acquisition mechanism and recommendation algorithms based on deep learning. With its excellent innovative content and reading experience, Qutoutiao Inc has become a mobile content aggregator unicorn. It was listed on the Nasdaq in the United States on Sept 14, 2018, becoming the first mobile content aggregator to go public and setting the record for the fastest listing of Chinese concept stocks in the US.

A medium-to-large internet company like Qutiaotiao Inc often has a mature ecosystem. It is like an invisible incubator. When it grows and expands, the free flow of talents will naturally form the spillover effect of industrial resources. From this point of view, the future of Yunxi Technology Park is promising.

Laogang Carbon Cycle Industrial Park: Focusing on "carbon cycle" theme 

Among the first and second batches of Shanghai’s 40 city-level characteristic industrial parks, industrial parks in the field of low-carbon environmental protection are lacking.

Pudong’s Laogang town is striving to build Laogang Carbon Cycle Industrial Park into a city-level characteristic industrial park in the field of low-carbon environmental protection.

In the industrial zone in Laogang, a number of carbon recycling enterprises represented by Senlan Environmental Protection, Xinyu Solid Waste, Aowei Technology, Xinjinqiao Environmental Protection, and Minxin Energy have set up shops, and they specialize in tech development, equipment production, energy supply, comprehensive resource utilization and other major fields, and have gradually taken on a certain scale, and a carbon recycling industry cluster has gradually taken shape in the area.

Laogang town has seized the opportunities for the development of low-carbon environmental protection industries brought by the national strategy of carbon peaking and carbon cycling. With technology research and development, achievement transformation and industry demonstration as the main initiatives, Laogang town is making every effort to build Laogang Carbon Cycle Industrial Park into a smart carbon cycle demonstration park that integrates carbon cycle operation and maintenance management, research, development and design, industry applications, technology transactions and comprehensive services, and a low-carbon technology agglomeration area and industrialization test base that is well-known in the Yangtze River Delta region and even in the country.

By the end of the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-25), the park is expected to invest 5 billion yuan ($741.12 million) in total, introduce more than 200 carbon cycling technology enterprises, increase the industrial scale by more than 30 percent annually, generate a tax revenue of 500 million yuan, accumulate 2 billion yuan in low-carbon technology transactions, introduce 10 low-carbon industry incubators and add more than 5,000 employees in the carbon cycling industry.

Relying on the construction of the Environmental Science and Technology Innovation Center of Shanghai Laogang Solid Waste Base, the park will focus on the theme of "carbon cycle", introduce national think tanks, actively connect and undertake the scientific research and innovation achievements from the base, provide space for the industrialization of cutting-edge carbon cycle technologies, and establish a realistic development orientation and expert certification system. The park focuses on the research, development and industrialization stage of the recycling of solid waste resources, while the center focuses on its pilot-scale experimental stage.

Laogang town is also exploring the "BP (Base + Park)" mode. In the approval stage of the Environmental Science and Technology Innovation Center, the park will attract various scientific research institutions to settle in the park for research and development of application scenarios. After the center is completed, the park and the center will cooperate to introduce scientific research institutions to carry out pilot-scale experiments, and the park will provide space for their industrialization.

In addition, Laogang town is also exploring to establish a carbon cycling industry guidance fund and leverage it to attract investment around the industrial chain. Relying on the Shanghai Laogang Solid Waste Base, the park will formulate a carbon cycling industry guide catalog and investment map, and carry out industry chain investment in a targeted manner. Focusing on industrial positioning, the park will focus on introducing a group of enterprises that are highly compatible with the resource cycling industry and have good growth potential, so as to take the lead and play exemplary roles. 

Gaodong Industrial Park: Gathering cruise-related enterprises

Gaodong town, which is located on the coast of the East China Sea and is across the river from Changxing Island and Hengsha Island in Chongming district, is making full use of its locational advantages to gather cruise-related industry chains that focus on the luxury cruise industry.

In recent years, China's cruise tourism market has developed rapidly, and the industry is in urgent demand for large domestic cruise ships.

In October 2019, China's first domestically produced large cruise ship officially started cutting ignition steel plates at Waigaoqiao Shipbuilding Co Ltd in Pudong and entered a substantive construction stage.

Each cruise ship sells for hundreds of millions of dollars, and the cruise ship industry is capital-intensive, tech-intensive and labor-intensive. In the next five years, 800 to 1,200 small and medium-sized enterprises supporting cruise ships will be needed to closely cooperate with Waigaoqiao Shipbuilding to build cruise ships.

For example, interior decoration projects on cruise cabins account for 48 percent of the total ship price. They include system design, substrate production, integrated assembly, ship installation and other methods of development, with an average annual output value of $260 million. Gaodong Industrial Park is adjacent to Waigaoqiao Shipbuilding, making it the most suitable park to undertake supporting various industrial projects.

Gaodong town will give full play to its geographical advantages to open up the entire chain of the upstream and downstream industrial layout of the cruise projects and drive industrial upgrading. The town has established a joint office for cruise industry projects as a centralized investment promotion platform for the cruise industry in an effort to promote the implementation of related industrial projects.

At present, Gaodong Industrial Park has gathered a number of cruise ship manufacturing enterprises such as Rongmei Cruise, Megaunity Shipbuilding, and KEYON.

Shanghai Megaunity Ventilation Engineering Co Ltd is the first cruise ship enterprise to settle in Gaodong town. The company will leverage the implementation of the HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) ventilation duct project on the first domestic large cruise ship. It is expected to serve as a professional platform for the localization of the HVAC ventilation system and products for cruise ships and high-end passenger ships, with a goal of becoming an internationally competitive high-end marine ventilation system integrator.

Focusing on the industry positioning and relying on the luxury cruise ship manufacturing base, Gaodong Industrial Park is formulating a upstream and downstream industry guidance catalogue and investment map, and is focusing on introducing a group of enterprises that are highly compatible with the cruise ship manufacturing industry and have strong growth potential, so as to take the lead and play exemplary roles.