An expert meeting takes place in Shanghai on May 23 to evaluate the feasibility of building two national manufacturing innovation centers in Shanghai. [Photo/WeChat account: sheitc]

Shanghai got the green light to build two national manufacturing innovation centers on May 23.

One is a national integrated circuit (IC) innovation center that will be built in the city's Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park in Pudong New Area, where more than 200 domestic and overseas well-known IC companies are located.

Co-built by Fudan University and two leading Chinese IC manufacturers SMIC and Huahong Group, the center will focus on the R&D of ICs at 5 nanometers or below and technologies including advanced simulation, extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV), object linking and embedding for process control (OPC), and advanced integrated technique.

It will also bring together IC giants in China to contribute to the R&D of the industry, and provide talents, technical support and intellectual property protection for the industrial technology upgrading and the future construction of large-scale production lines.

The other is a national intelligent sensor innovation center that will settle down in the city's Jiading district.

The center, that will be built by the Shanghai Industrial Technology Research Institute and leading companies in the field, will focus on sensor technology innovation, with the hope of developing into a world class intelligent sensor innovation center.

The two centers are results of the country's Made in China 2025 strategy, which has proposed a goal of building around 40 national manufacturing innovation centers by 2025. The strategy is expected to improve the competitiveness of China's manufacturing industry. 

The total number of China's national manufacturing innovation centers will stand at seven after the launch of these two new centers. The other five centers feature power battery (Beijing), additive manufacturing (Xi'an), information and optoelectronics (Wuhan), robotics (Shenyang), and printing and flexible display (Guangdong) respectively.

Luo Wen, deputy minister of Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, attends the expert meeting in Shanghai on May 23. [Photo/WeChat account: sheitc]

Zhou Bo, vice mayor of Shanghai, speaks of the importance of building the national integrated circuit innovation center and the national intelligent sensor innovation center to Shanghai on May 23. [Photo/WeChat account: sheitc]