Luo Songsong

    songsongluo@126.com

    A PROVINCIAL conference on high-tech innovation will be held in Shenzhen on Friday to map out blueprints for the strategic development of the high-tech industry in Guangdong Province.

    Top leaders of 21 major cities of Guangdong will attend the one-day meeting, at which professionals, entrepreneurs and organizations who have made extraordinary scientific achievements will receive awards.

    The meeting was held in Guangzhou in 2013 and 2014.

    Shenzhen won State Council approval in June last year to become the country’s fourth national Innovation Demonstration Zone.

    China aims to build Shenzhen into a “special technology zone,” according to a Xinhua News Agency report.

    The city is home to about 30,000 high-tech companies. Among them, three yielded an annual sales revenue of more than 100 billion yuan (US$16 billion), 17 more than 10 billion yuan, and 157 more than 1 billion yuan, according to a Shenzhen Special Zone Daily report Thursday.

    In 2014, the added value of Shenzhen’s high-tech companies hit 517.3 billion yuan, up 11.2 percent over 2013. The city’s investment in high-tech research and development accounted for 4 percent of its GDP last year.

    Shenzhen was listed by Forbes China as the most innovative city on the Chinese mainland last year and five of the people included in the top 10 of the magazine’s list of China’s Most Innovative People are based in Shenzhen.

    Wang Chuanfu, board chairman of automaker BYD, Wang Jian, president of BGI, Wang Wei, president of SF Express, Zhang Xiaolong, senior vice president of Tencent, and Wang Tao, founder of DJI Innovations, each gained a spot in the top 10.

    According to statistics published by World Intellectual Property Organization in 2013, four Chinese companies, all headquartered in Shenzhen, entered the top 50 in terms of PCT (Patent Cooperation Treaty) patent applications — ZTE, Huawei, Tencent and CSOT. For 11 years in a row, Shenzhen has topped the country in PCT applications.