Chongqing- Chinese Premier Li Keqiang outlined significant social and economic objectives for the 14th Five-Year Plan period when delivering a report on the government's work during the fourth session of the 13th National People's Congress (NPC) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Friday.

According to Li, China will stick to the innovation-driven development strategy and accelerate the building of a modern industrial system. The country will uphold the core position of innovation in its modernization drive and commit to independent innovation in science and technology as strategic support to national development.

As China will make greater efforts to achieve breakthroughs in key and core technologies, Chongqing is constructing an industrial manufacturing base with global influence in response to this national strategy.

Chongqing is constructing an industrial manufacturing base with global influence in response to this national strategy. (iChongqing/ Zhou Lingyu)

For instance, Chongqing will speed up transformation to realize medium-high end, electric, intelligent, and sharing development when it comes to the auto industry. Efforts will be made to support Chang’an Automobile and Beijing Hyundai in R&D investment, and prompt Changan Ford, Lincoln, SAIC Hongyan, and Great Wall Motors to move faster to produce medium and high-end intelligent networked auto, and propel the power battery project of BYD, seeking to build a leading national area of car networking. 

As for the biomedicine industry, efforts will be made to build a whole industrial chain system covering the innovation and industrialization of new drugs, accelerate the clinical test and commercialization of innovative drugs; greater efforts will be made to develop medical equipment and TCM industry, build Chongqing International Biological City, and shape a national biomedicine industry cluster.

The Science and Technology Incubation Building in the Chongqing International Biological City. (iChongqing file photo)

Furthermore, Chongqing also aims to accelerate the building of a national pilot zone for innovation-driven development of the digital economy, where concentrated efforts will be made to build “a powerhouse of intelligent manufacturing” and “an important city of smart manufacturing.”