Liu Minxia mllmx@msn.com A SHENZHEN-BASED industrial park operator signed a strategic cooperation deal with U.S.-based International Data Group (IDG) on Thursday on the sideline of the China Hi-Tech Fair to explore ways of developing smart industrial parks against a backdrop of the phenomenal rise of smart technology and a sharing economy. “IDG has impressive experience in convention and exhibition as well as in venture capital in China,” said Du Cansheng, president of Tianan Cyber Park Group. “Because of this, IDG is an ideal partner to aid us in developing industrial parks and supporting the startups and makers in our parks.” Tianan services more than 10,000 firms in 17 industrial parks it has established in 11 Chinese cities, Du said. A rising sharing economy is giving the group opportunities in optimizing its operations and management, he said. It’s upgrading its old parks and building new smart parks, pioneering a model for smart city construction, Du said. “Compared with building the new ones, it takes more time to upgrade the old parks as they’re already in use,” said Du. Phase IV of the Longgang park, which will come into use next year, will be a model for the smart industrial parks it’s trying to build. “We’re doing research on how the firms in our parks can benefit from using smart technology and the idea of a sharing economy,” said Du. “We’ve had examples of helping firms in our park find suppliers or buyers within the park. We want to better coordinate the industrial chain within the park.” Amid a nationwide push for innovation to drive a slowing economy, Du said that he has been seeing an increasing number of maker startups in their parks, especially in the two Shenzhen parks, one of which is in the Chegongmiao area in Futian and the other in Longgang. “We didn’t accept small firms in the past, but now we’re devoting about 50,000 square meters of office space to house roughly 200 startups created by makers nationwide, half of which are in Shenzhen,” he said. | 