This year marks the 31st anniversary of the establishment of Zhangjiang Science City in China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone. Following three decades of development, the area has developed from a vast farmland into an international hub of scientific and technological innovation.

In the first half of this year, Zhangjiang registered 184.05 billion yuan ($25.6 billion) in industrial output value above designated size, a year-on-year increase of 12.4 percent, and accounting for nearly 10 percent of Shanghai's total.

Zhangjiang has formed an industrial spatial layout, led by three "hard-core" industries: biomedicine, integrated circuits, and artificial intelligence. They continuously achieve breakthroughs in key core technologies in Zhangjiang Science City, and have a high annual growth rate of more than 10 percent.

In addition, eight major scientific facilities, including the Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility, the National Center for Protein Science Shanghai, the Shanghai Superintense Ultrafast Laser Facility, and the Shanghai Soft X-ray Free-Electron Laser User Facility, have all been established in Zhangjiang. They have initially formed the largest, most diverse, and most powerful photon major scientific facility cluster in China and even in the world.

As of May 2023, Zhangjiang Science City had approximately 500,000 employees, with 100,000 of them holding postgraduate degrees. Young talents account for 80 percent of the total workforce, and about 50 percent of entrepreneurs from overseas in Shanghai are working in Zhangjiang. This talent pool has achieved a series of globally influential technological achievements.

From January to June this year, Zhangjiang Science City achieved a total operating income of 557.51 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 10.5 percent. Fixed asset investment amount reached 19.37 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 26.2 percent.

At present, several new sci-tech facilities are under construction in Zhangjiang. They include Zhangjiang Laboratory and Shanghai Research Institute for Intelligent Autonomous Systems of Tongji University.

An aerial view of Zhangjiang Science City. [Photo/WeChat account: zhangjiangfabu]