Business environment

Financial support

From 2011 to 2020, Shenzhen will spend 21.5 billion yuan on the construction of seven emerging industries. In 2016, the Shenzhen government plans to invest 5 billion yuan in these industries.

Industrial development

In 2015, the added value of the major emerging industries in Shenzhen reached 700.35 billion yuan, up 16.1 percent from the previous year. The industrial scale of the major emerging industries increased by 22.4 percent from the previous year to 2.3 trillion yuan. The proportion of the added value of the industries to Shenzhen's GDP is more than 40 percent, which shows that they are becoming the major engines for Shenzhen's economy. As the industrial scale of the industries expanded rapidly, their economic returns also increased significantly.

In 2015, Shenzhen's R&D investment was 70.9 billion yuan, comprising 4.05 percent of the city's GDP. The investment goes side by side with that of Israel and South Korea. The number of Shenzhen's PCT (Patent Cooperation Treaty) applications totaled 13,308, accounting for almost 50 percent of the national total. There are now 1,283 innovative platforms headquartered in Shenzhen and, in 2015 alone, 176 new platforms were established. Tencent, ZTE, Salubris and BYD won the China Gold Patent Award in 2015, which accounted for 20 percent of the awardees. Shenzhen took four seats out of the 10 Chinese on Forbes' list of China-U.S. innovative figures.

Shenzhen has developed cutting-edge technologies in various fields, including telecommunication, DNA sequencing and new energy vehicles. Having emerged as the global leaders in 4G mobile network industry, Huawei and ZTE are also actively engaged in 5G innovation. In the area of biotechnology, BGI-Shenzhen is globally known for its excellence in new DNA sequencing as well as extensive biological information analysis. While SuperD's Glasses-free 3-D is recognized as a world-leading technique, Royole Corporation has developed more than 200 core technologies of flexible display. What's more, over 85 percent of the world's metamaterials inventions are credited to Kuang-Chi Institute of Advanced Technology.

Shenzhen has witnessed an increasing number of local companies step onto the world stage. Huawei, one of the biggest telecommunications equipment suppliers and mobile phone manufacturers in the world, expected its business revenue in 2015 to reach 390 billion yuan. As an Internet giant, Tencent generated 102.86 billion yuan in revenue in 2015, up 30 percent from the previous year. BYD, one of the world's largest producers of new energy battery and vehicles, achieved a revenue in 2015 of 80 billion yuan, up 37.49 percent from the previous year. Also, a great many specialized companies have emerged in various fields. For instance, Hepalink plays a major role in the global market of Heparin-related products. DJI-Innovations occupies over 70 percent of the global share in the civilian UAV market, whereas UBTECH Robotics Corporation is a pioneer of intelligent humanoid robots, with a market value estimated at $1 billion.

Cultural innovative development

At the beginning of 2016, the Shenzhen Cultural Innovative Development 2020 Plan (2020 Plan) was passed. The 2020 Plan is the guidance to the cultural development of the city for the following five years. It aims to help enhance the city's comprehensive cultural strength and build a modern, globalized, innovative city with a strong soft power.