Nanshan District took first place among China’s top 100 districts and counties in terms of innovation, according to the 2023 ranking released by CCID Consulting, an institute under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
Six other districts from Shenzhen, namely Bao’an, Longgang, Futian, Longhua, Guangming and Luohu, also entered the list, ranking second, sixth, 10th, 13th, 24th and 32nd, respectively.
The report, based on the criteria of innovation ecology, innovation impetus, innovative entities and innovation achievements, showed that Nanshan is one of the most dynamic regions in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) and in China. This confirmed that all sectors of society are optimistic about the district’s development.
In 2022, Nanshan’s GDP reached 803.6 billion yuan (US$116.66 billion), up 3.3% year on year. Its invention patents accounted for 41.8% of the city’s total, and the number of invention patents reached 521 per 10,000 people, 4.1 times the city’s average and 23.6 times the national average. It is also home to 18,000 different types of talents and 68 full-time academicians of the of Chinese Academy of Sciences and Chinese Academy of Engineering.
Nanshan now houses 205 publicly listed companies, and 30 years after the district’s establishment, many of the companies in the district like Huawei, Ping An, Tencent, China Merchants Bank and DJI have become globally influential.
The report showed that the 100 counties and districts are housing 125,000 high-tech companies, up 28.9% over 2022, and 1,814 “little giant” enterprises specializing in niche markets, up 116.2% over 2022. In the fourth batch of “little giant” enterprises released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology last year, 90 were from Nanshan, accounting for one-third of the city’s total.