Wuhan to invest 40 bln yuan in high-tech infrastructure

Wuhan, capital of central China's Hubei Province, will invest 40 billion yuan (about 6 billion U.S. dollars) to provide key support to the development of high-tech infrastructure by 2022, local authorities said.

The province and its capital will forge ahead with high-tech industries by raising a 10-billion-yuan fund per year for major projects, platforms, industrial parks, equipment and talent teams, from 2019 to 2022.

So far, a research facility of precise gravity measurement, a national major science and technology infrastructure, is under construction in Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan.

In the past few years, the city has completed a pulsed high magnetic field facility and opened China's first national bio-safety level four lab, which requires the highest level of biological safety.

Wuhan will work with universities, institutes and enterprises to achieve great breakthroughs in various fields including integrated electromagnetic energy, optoelectronics, microelectronics, geomatics, and new materials, as well as build national laboratories.

Data released at the city's science and technology conference for 2019 on Friday showed that the value added of the hi-tech industries in Wuhan exceeded 300 billion yuan last year, accounting for 20.56 percent of its gross domestic product.

With 3,536 high-tech enterprises in total, the city is making efforts to build itself into a tech hub of the country.

(ASIA PACIFIC DAILY)