China’s eastern, southern economic powerhouses vie for innovation leadership

China’s most powerful economic regions – the Yangtze River Delta and the Greater Bay Area – are racing to meet President Xi Jinping’s call for breakthroughs in core technologies including artificial intelligence, as Beijing maps out priorities for the coming 15th five-year plan during the “two sessions”.

As part of the annual meeting on Friday, provincial and municipal leaders of Zhejiang province outlined an ambitious strategy to become a key area of AI development and cement the province’s innovation role within the Yangtze River Delta, while Shanghai’s mayor also vowed to help make the delta region into a “global technology powerhouse”.

On the same day, officials from the southern province of Guangdong – home to the nine mainland cities that, together with Hong Kong and Macau, make up the Greater Bay Area – vowed to accelerate technological and industrial innovation to reinforce that region’s position as one of China’s most advanced manufacturing bases.

On Thursday, Xi told deputies from Jiangsu province that China’s major provincial economies should take the lead in technological innovation and strengthen their resilience to external shocks over the next five years.

Zhejiang province, part of the megalopolis comprising Shanghai and part of surrounding provinces Jiangsu and Anhui, promised closer integration with other parts of the delta as it sought to “seize the major strategic opportunity” to co-build an international innovation base.

The delta area makes up only 4 per cent of the country’s land area but accounts for about a quarter of its gross domestic product (GDP).

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