By LI Linxu

China's national hi-tech zones continue to drive the country's economic growth, generating 13.56 trillion RMB or 13 percent of the country's GDP with only 0.1 percent of its land use, according to latest statistics from a report.

The report has been released for nine consecutive years. Its latest edition assessed the innovation capabilities of 169 national hi-tech zones in 2020, based on five primary indicators and 25 secondary indicators.

In 2020, the total innovation index of national hi-tech zones rose to 371.9 points, up 45.5 points year-on-year, indicating that their transformation towards high-quality development is gaining momentum.

Among the five primary indicators, the index of innovation and entrepreneurship environment performed the best, registering a 21.4 percent growth year-on-year.

Guiyang National Hi-tech Zone, Guizhou province. (PHOTO: VCG)

There were 748,000 newly registered enterprises in national hi-tech zones in 2020, a daily increase of 350 enterprises compared with last year.

The amount of industrial investment funding in national hi-tech zones reached 2.34 trillion RMB, up 34.4 percent year-on-year.

Their R&D intensity maintained a high level. In 2020, the internal expenditure of enterprises on R&D reached 919.2 billion RMB in these zones, accounting for almost half of the country's enterprise R&D expenditure.

Of particular note is that the international cooperation momentum in hi-tech zones remained strong despite the pandemic.

In 2020, 15,500 foreign experts were introduced to national hi-tech zones, said the report.

Since the pandemic outbreak, national hi-tech zones have shown strong resilience and growth momentum, said an official from the Ministry of Science and Technology, calling for the hi-tech zones to further improve innovation capabilities and optimize innovation ecology.