Foshan National Hi-tech Industrial Development Zone’s Innovation Points System Fuels New Quality Productive Forces

The Foshan National Hi-tech Industrial Development Zone (hereinafter as “FHIDZ”) has made significant strides in advancing productivity and innovation through its pioneering "Innovation Points System." Over the past three years, this system has created detailed profiles for more than 4,800 companies, greatly expanding the reach of high-quality enterprises and driving the city’s high-quality development.

New Production Tools as Indicators of New Quality Productive Forces

Since the 20th National Congress of the CPC, the central leadership with President Xi Jinping at the core has made major theoretical innovations regarding productivity. As a new type of social productivity, new quality productive forces are characterized by high-tech, high efficiency and high quality. They are shaped by revolutionary technological breakthroughs, innovative allocation of production factors, and deep industrial transformation and upgrading, with the improvement of labor forces, means of labor, subjects of labor and their optimal combination as underlying elements, and a substantial increase in total factor productivity as a core hallmark.

According to Karl Marx’s Capital, the essence of productive forces involves the development of productive capacity and its elements, which drive social change and development. Historical industrial revolutions have shown that significant advances in productive capacity and its elements result from long periods of gradual accumulation followed by revolutionary increases in productivity, shaping new global production forms.

The new quality productive forces, characterized by enhanced combinations of labor, materials, and production objects, are reflected in the adoption of advanced production tools. Historical innovations, such as the steam engine and computer, have driven significant improvements in productivity and industry transformation.

In the 21st century, shifting global dynamics, accelerating technological revolutions, and evolving industrial and value chains present both challenges and opportunities. China’s advances in new technologies and innovative resource allocation offer new opportunities for industrial transformation and high-quality growth.

To stimulate sustained high-quality development, it is essential to explore new development "drivers." Accelerating the development of new quality productive forces is crucial for achieving high-quality economic and social development, transforming productivity, and building a modern industrial system.

The Innovation Points System as a Key Tool for New Quality Productive Forces

Innovation, driven by technology and capital, requires financial fresh impetus, particularly from capital markets. The Innovation Points System, a new technological finance policy tool, helps aggregate various innovation elements towards enterprises by quantifying their innovation capabilities. This system evaluates core indicators such as R&D investment, team capabilities, and intellectual property, and provides precise support based on innovation points.

Unlike traditional methods, the Innovation Points System identifies and supports enterprises with strong R&D capabilities and potential. It aligns resources such as technology, capital, talent, and public services with enterprise needs, embodying the principles of new quality productive forces.

New quality productive forces are defined by the enhancement and optimization of laborers, production tools, and production objects. As a new form of productivity, its function manifests through the process wherein laborers equipped with relevant knowledge, skills, and competencies utilize advanced production tools to act upon new production objects. There are three key elements involved in this process:

1.New Workforce: This includes strategic talents capable of creating new quality productivity and application-oriented talents skilled in utilizing new quality production resources.

2. New Production Tools: Particularly those capable of mastering key core technologies and empowering the development of emerging industries.

3. Adapted Production Relations: Reforming and optimizing production relations to fit the development of new quality productivity, through efforts to align these relations with the new productivity model.

An example of this is the practical application of the Innovation Points System, where the Ministry's Torch High Technology Industry Development Center, and the FHIDZ Committee play the role of the new labor force. The Torch Center acts as a top-down platform, facilitating two key roles: first, promoting pilot high-tech zones to calculate innovation points for enterprises based on classification, and second, actively mobilizing financial resources to support these enterprises and effectively link them with social capital. The FHIDZ Committee, meanwhile, guides diversified capital into the technology finance sector to support the innovation-driven growth of tech enterprises.

The Innovation Points System itself, through its digital tools and intelligent information systems, becomes a modern production tool. It helps the new labor force, such as the staff of the high-tech zone, to better quantify and manage real-time information about companies and their innovation capabilities. By improving the speed of evaluation, recording, sorting, and understanding of enterprise data, reduces the cognitive burden on staff, enhances the quality and efficiency of enterprise development, and promotes their transition toward new quality productive forces.

Moreover, the interaction between the system and enterprise development clearly reflects the alignment of new production relations with new quality productive forces. As new quality productive forces reshape production relations, adjustments in these relations become necessary. Enterprises that receive resource support through the Innovation Points System often experience bursts of innovation, becoming new productive entities themselves. The long-term data generated through the system serves as experimental evidence and research material, further reinforcing new quality productive forces in enterprises, technology finance, and research within the high-tech zone. This interaction highlights the digitization, networking, and intelligence-driven evolution of production relations under new quality productive forces.

In summary, the Innovation Points System, as a new production tool, leverages digital technologies to evaluate the innovation capacity of enterprises. It optimizes the allocation and coordination of productivity factors efficiently.

The interplay between labor, labor tools, and production objects forms an interconnected and mutually reinforcing system. The Innovation Points System is an effective tool to achieve high-efficiency coordination and optimization of these factors under new quality productive forces.

In practice, FHIDZ has demonstrated exceptional performance in utilizing this system.

FHIDZ: Seeking Breakthroughs in New Productivity with an Innovation Points System

In January 2021, FHIDZ was recognized as one of the first 13 pilot units nationwide for the innovation points system.

Adhering to the principles of innovation orientation and characteristic leadership, FHIDZ has established a comprehensive, layered, and objective enterprise innovation points system. This system includes core indicators uniformly set by the Torch Center of the Ministry of Science and Technology and special indicators tailored to Foshan's status. 

The secondary indicators of these special indicators are designed to support Foshan's role as a comprehensive reform pilot area for the transformation and upgrading of the manufacturing industry. They focus on two main areas: overall quality and professional technical indicators. These include 13 secondary indicators such as recognition of entrepreneurial and craftsmanship spirit, compound growth rate of revenue, and market share of niche products, emphasizing the "manufacturing" characteristic of the evaluation criteria.

FHIDZ has fully leveraged the innovation points system as a new tool in science and technology financial policy. The zone conducts an annual enterprise innovation points evaluation based on the points results, which are then released at major events and included in the direct service targets for the management committee of the zone and the leadership of various park management bureaus. Additionally, the zone has vigorously promoted the application of points evaluation results across various policies, particularly in policy and finance areas, providing assistance to listed enterprises and fully stimulating their innovation potential.

In terms of policy, FHIDZ has effectively integrated 17 leading policies scattered across different departments, focusing on key policies related to "Gazelle" enterprises, "Single Champion" enterprises, and "Unicorn" enterprises. The zone has encouraged the five sub-parks and their respective towns and streets to refine their supporting policies, using the enterprise innovation points evaluation results as the basis to implement a "one policy for one enterprise" approach, offering precise support throughout the "entire lifecycle" of the enterprise.

In the financial sector, FHIDZ has involved financial institutions, investment institutions, and capital markets in the enterprise innovation points system pilot. For example, the zone has established a special area for the Guangdong SME Financing Platform, releasing a range of exclusive financial products such as the FHIDZ "Enterprise Innovation Points Loan," "Intellectual Property Pledge Financing," "Guarantee Loan," and "High-Growth Enterprise Technology Loan." 

On March 28, 2024, the FHIDZ Innovation Points List was released during a financial matchmaking conference at Qiandeng Lake Venture Town. The event showcased the 2023 Innovation Points List and introduced innovative financial products tailored to the listed enterprises.

At the event, FHIDZ's 2023 Innovation Points List was unveiled alongside a financial matchmaking conference.

Notably, in 2022, the Torch Center of the Ministry of Science and Technology released the "First Pilot National High-Tech Zone Innovation Points 500 Enterprises List," with 20 enterprises from FHIDZ making the list, ranking ninth nationwide. Among these, the number of listed manufacturing enterprises ranked third among the pilot national high-tech zones, further highlighting the leading position of manufacturing in the region.

The core element of developing new productivity is technological innovation, but technological breakthroughs require sustained resource investment over time. As the lifeblood of the economy, finance must efficiently empower the cultivation and growth of new productivity. FHIDZ has found a new breakthrough by combining "points" and "broad coverage," comprehensively optimizing financial support for the development of new productivity:

On the "points" side, the zone is continuously improving the enterprise innovation points evaluation system, actively exploring application scenarios for innovation points results, deepening government-bank cooperation, enhancing the science and technology financial service system, and innovating methods in science and technology finance.

On the "broad coverage" side, the zone is widely collecting data from tax departments, market regulation departments, and high-quality enterprises in various industrial parks to expand coverage of enterprises within the zone, aiming to achieve full coverage of enterprises in the zone as soon as possible. Efforts are also being made to break down data silos across departments, integrating and collecting scattered enterprise data to improve the authenticity of the data and facilitate data sharing among enterprises.

Moving forward, FHIDZ will encourage financial institutions to develop more specialized financial products for innovation points, allowing more technology-based enterprises to gain capital support during their development. At the same time, the zone will create a better environment for entrepreneurs to focus on their core businesses, using new technologies, equipment, materials, and processes to improve product quality and production efficiency.

Looking ahead, as FHIDZ continues to update and refine the innovation points system, it will further promote the organic integration of technological innovation and the financial industry, guide industrial transformation and upgrading, and accelerate the formation of new productivity. This will enable the zone to take on a stronger role in building a demonstration area for innovation-driven development and a pioneer area for high-quality development.

Looking Ahead: The Innovation Points System Still Has Room for "Upgrades"

Recently, the General Office of the Ministry of Science and Technology issued the "Innovation Points System" Work Guidelines (National Trial Version), extending the Innovation Points System from national high-tech zones to technology-based small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) nationwide, continuing to serve as an effective new technology-finance policy tool.

Accelerating the formation of new quality productivity is both a developmental and reform imperative. President Xi Jinping has emphasized that "to develop new quality productivity, we must further deepen reforms comprehensively and establish a new type of production relationship that adapts to it."

In the era of intelligence, production methods have undergone profound changes. The formation and development of new quality productivity require continuous advancement of workers, labor tools, and labor objects, while also needing innovation and reform to continually improve the efficiency of resource allocation.

In the practical application of the Innovation Points System pilot, there is still room for "upgrades."

First, as the vanguard of technological innovation and reform exploration, the FHIDZ Management Committee must elevate the construction of the Innovation Points System to a level that supports technological self-reliance and modernization of the industrial system.

The FHIDZ Management Committee needs to support enterprises at different stages of development, while also taking on multiple roles, including those of manager, consultant, and researcher. This requires FHIDZ staff to be proficient in information on enterprises, industries, and policies, while maintaining a company-centric work philosophy. Given the demanding work environment and the backdrop of international and domestic development trends, this places high demands on the quality of FHIDZ staff.

Moreover, the "upgraded" Innovation Points System should shift its value from merely satisfying park operations to promoting regional coordinated development. Key areas of focus include studying the relationship between existing regional policies and Innovation Points System indicators, the mutual recognition mechanisms between different evaluation systems targeting enterprises, and the operability of converting park enterprise data into points.

The goal is to gradually link current regional innovation policies and enterprise evaluation systems with the Innovation Points System, constructing an enterprise innovation database and a data open-sharing platform, forming a regional system that fosters a new pattern of regional coordinated innovation development characterized by clear functional roles, resource sharing, and complementary advantages.

As technological revolutions and industrial transformations accelerate, new production tools like artificial intelligence, virtual reality, robotics, the Internet of Things, and automated manufacturing equipment are emerging rapidly. The innovative use of these new tools is sure to drive the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries, strengthen and expand strategic emerging industries, and accelerate the cultivation of future industries, thereby speeding up the formation and development of new quality productivity.

National high-tech zones should leverage new technologies to achieve digital intelligent governance. For example, building big data and AI-driven real-time monitoring, intelligent points evaluation, and a risk warning system based on "application-free procedure" could alert companies to fluctuations in their points, identify innovation issues, and provide relevant suggestions. Approaches like these are prerequisites for further "upgrading" the Innovation Points System as a production tool and are areas worth deep exploration and research.

Of course, the development of new concepts always requires a process. We need to support them enthusiastically and protect them carefully, allowing them to continually improve and mature through practice.