Xiongan New Area to become China's next tech hub

CHINA announced the establishment of Xiongan New Area, a new economic zoneabout 100 kilometers southwest of downtown BEIJING spanning three counties in north CHINA's Hebei Province, in April 2017.

Xiongan New Area's primary function is to serve as a development hub for the BEIJING-Tianjin-Hebei (Jing-jin-ji) economic triangle, and dispersing the capital city BEIJING's functions. Non-core, non-capital industries of BEIJING are expected to transfer over to Xiongan, including offices of some state-owned enterprises, government agencies, and research and development facilities of multinational companies.

As of March 2019, 2582 enterprises have registered to operate in the New Area, most of them coming from BEIJING.

Among the newly registered enterprises, more than half of them are from information and technology industries, which shows Xiongan's ambition to follow an innovation-driven growth model and lead the technological development in the northern part of CHINA.

"Xiongan's development in high-end technology industries could lead the industrial structure optimization in the Jing-jin-ji region," said Wu Hequan, deputy head of the expert committee advising the coordinated development of the Jing-jin-ji region and academician at the Chinese Academy of Engineering in a People's Daily report on Monday.

"Seventy to 80 percent of the economic growth in Xiongan will be deriving from high-end technology industries," Wu said.

CHINA's technology giants including Tencent, Alibaba, and Baidu were among the first batch to relocate to the New Area back in September 2017. Of the 48 companies, 14 are leading IT companies, 15 are modern financial service companies, seven are high-end technology research institutes, five are green ecological companies, and the rest are high-end service companies of different fields.

Tencent plans a fintech lab in the Area, which is expected to pilot technology breakthroughs in cloud computing, risk management system using big data and blockchain service in Xiongan first.

According to the New Area's development plan, Xiongan will prioritize the industrial layout of artificial intelligence, big data, cloud computing, mobile internet, biopharmaceutical development, genetic engineering, high-end medical equipment development, and satellite communication navigation, to form a world-class high-tech industrial cluster.

The initial industrial layout will be completed by 2020, according to the development plan.