A technological revolution and industrial transformation centered on new quality productive forces is reshaping the national regional landscape. This year's government work report emphasized accelerating the cultivation and expansion of new growth drivers, insisting on focusing economic development on the real economy, developing new quality productive forces tailored to local conditions, and building a modern industrial system. As a city with a GDP exceeding one trillion yuan renowned for its manufacturing prowess, Changzhou saw its new energy industry scale surpass one trillion yuan in 2025, further enhancing its development level. The city also gained nationwide recognition through the popularity of the "Jiangsu Super League." During the National Two Sessions, Wang Jianfeng, a deputy to the National People's Congress and Secretary of the Changzhou Municipal Party Committee, stated in an exclusive interview that Changzhou's development foundation lies in manufacturing, its comparative advantage lies in manufacturing, and the consolidation and enhancement of the city's status during the 15th Five-Year Plan period will still rely on manufacturing. Anchored by the new urban positioning of "International Intelligent Manufacturing City, Innovation Highland of the Yangtze River Delta," Changzhou is striving towards the goal of achieving an industrial scale of three trillion yuan within the next five years.
Adhering to long-termism, building a new energy industry highland with international competitiveness. Industry is the core support of urban competitiveness. In 2025, Changzhou's new energy industry scale broke through the one trillion yuan mark, reaching 1047.9 billion yuan. What are the main practices and experiences behind Changzhou's successful cultivation of a trillion-yuan level industry? First, consolidate distinctive advantages. The more distinctive something is, the more irreplaceable, competitive, and vital it becomes. Changzhou's manufacturing sector has distinct characteristics and prominent strengths. Years of accumulation in fields like new energy, intelligent equipment manufacturing, and new materials have built a complete industrial chain ecosystem. New energy enterprises can quickly find supporting processes and integrate into the upstream and downstream industrial chain in Changzhou, achieving growth beyond expectations. Based on this advantage, after long-term development, high-quality capacity in segmented sectors continues to be released. Currently, the output of new energy vehicles exceeds 800,000 units, and the completeness of the power battery industry chain reaches 97%, ranking first nationally, strongly supporting the scaled and high-end development of the new energy industry. Second, strengthen the driving role of chain leaders. By leveraging the leading role of key enterprises, we fully support the successive project construction of companies like BYD, Li Auto, and CATL, assist over 3,400 supporting enterprises in entering the supplier directory, promote industrial chain optimization, upgrading, integration, and complementarity, enhance the localization and proximity of the supply chain, strengthen industrial resilience, and build long-term competitive advantages. Focusing on key细分 industries, we organize and conduct the "Hundred Sessions, Thousand Enterprises" industrial chain对接 activities, build and实体化 operate industrial chain hub platforms, and fully connect the upstream and downstream. Enterprises developing in Changzhou can seamlessly embed into the industrial chain, quickly integrate into the larger循环, and gain access to first-class talent support, rich application scenarios, and sufficient funding guarantees. Particularly important is adhering to long-termism. The new energy industry has broad prospects and sufficient capacity, but competition is intense. In the past, we坚守 the real economy, focused on advantageous industries, and were not swayed by temporary market fluctuations. In the future, we will continue to exert sustained effort, strengthen our internal capabilities, seize opportunities brought by market clearance and industry reshuffling, single-mindedly expand market share, refine and maintain product competitiveness with meticulous care, and achieve sustained strength for the strong through the trials of competition,全力 building a new energy industry highland representing Jiangsu's high-quality development level and possessing international competitiveness.
Looking towards the "15th Five-Year Plan," Changzhou proposes to lead and demonstrate in the integration of technological innovation and industrial innovation, accelerating the cultivation of new quality productive forces. How will Changzhou next accelerate the transformation of innovation resources into new quality productive forces? As an industrial powerhouse and a trillion-yuan city, Changzhou has consistently placed technological innovation at the core of its overall development in recent years, implementing innovation policies, aggregating innovation resources, and fostering an innovation ecosystem, achieving significant results in promoting the integration of technological and industrial innovation. Changzhou's enterprises exhibit strong innovation vitality, boasting nearly 5,800 high-tech enterprises, 45 national-level manufacturing单项 champions, and 321 specialized, refined, distinctive, and innovative "Little Giant" enterprises. The output value of high-tech industries accounts for over 60% of the total, R&D expenditure as a percentage of GDP reaches 3.62%, and there are 1,278 provincial-level or above enterprise R&D institutions, indicating a solid foundation for the integration of technological and industrial innovation. Next, we will base our actions on reality and local conditions to accelerate the gathering of innovation factors towards the industry frontier and the front lines of development,牵引 driving the deep integration of industrial technology and innovation, and cultivating更多 new quality productive forces. First, strengthen the enterprise matrix. We will更加突出 the primary role of enterprises in innovation, encourage leading enterprises and chain leaders to take the lead in forming innovation consortia, promote enterprises to become the main bodies of innovation decision-making, R&D investment, scientific research organization, and成果转化, and continuously improve independent innovation capability and core competitiveness. We are accelerating the cultivation of a "555" enterprise梯队, forming a backbone enterprise matrix comprising 5 enterprises with scale of 100 billion yuan, 50 enterprises with scale of 10 billion yuan, and 500 enterprises with scale of 1 billion yuan, allowing large enterprises to 'prop up the sky'. We will improve the梯次 cultivation mechanism for "S&T SMEs - High-tech Enterprises - Gazelle Enterprises - Unicorn Enterprises", support more specialized, refined, distinctive, and innovative enterprises to grow into "Little Giants" and单项 champions, allowing SMEs to 'cover the ground', forming an industrial ecology where large, medium, and small enterprises协同 advance. Second, strengthen innovation platforms. We will organize and implement high-quality development actions for technological innovation platforms, focusing on promoting the integration of Longcheng Laboratory into the national "Industrial Mother Machine" innovation system, striving to establish it as a provincial laboratory, and achieving breakthroughs in national-level innovation centers in areas like carbon fiber and composite materials, clean energy materials as soon as possible, to better integrate into national and provincial innovation layouts. Third, strengthen the talent team. We will continuously iterate and improve the talent policy system, focus on key industry needs, deeply conduct talent and intelligence recruitment activities面向 advanced cities and renowned universities, and gather more innovative talents and teams. We will simultaneously focus on education, technology, and talent, strengthen the construction of high-level universities, establish discipline setting and adjustment mechanisms and talent cultivation models牵引ed by technological development and strategic needs, and increase the retention rate of graduates from Changzhou's universities in Changzhou.
Adhering to industry as the foundation, promoting the "two-way奔赴" of artificial intelligence and the real economy. Changzhou proposes to achieve an industrial scale of three trillion yuan by the end of the "15th Five-Year Plan" period. What considerations underlie setting this goal? How will Changzhou cultivate more pillar industries, including new energy? Changzhou's development foundation lies in manufacturing, its comparative advantage lies in manufacturing, and the consolidation and enhancement of the city's status during the "15th Five-Year Plan" period will still rely on manufacturing. We坚守 industry as the foundation, always focus economic development on the real economy, and based on the "1028" industrial system (10 advanced manufacturing clusters and 28 key industrial chains), cultivate a "1+2+N" industrial梯队, forming an industrial pattern of "multi-polar drive,协同发力". Among these, "1" refers to the new energy industry, with the goal of exceeding 1.2 trillion yuan in scale by 2030, striving to create a national-level strategic emerging industrial cluster. "2" refers to the two advantageous industries of intelligent equipment and new materials, each aiming for a scale of 500 billion yuan. "N" refers to promoting growth industries like electronic information, pharmaceuticals, and medical devices towards the 100-billion-yuan level, while simultaneously布局 new tracks, cultivating future industries, and building a national advanced manufacturing base.
Changzhou is focusing on building a "6+X" future industrial system centered on artificial intelligence, embodied intelligence, etc., with AI placed in a prominent position. How does Changzhou plan to utilize "AI+" to drive the genetic restructuring of manufacturing? How can it further carve out a differentiated path in future industries? Last September, we issued the "Implementation Plan for Accelerating the Cultivation and Development of Future Industries (2025~2030)". Based on the three factors of "spatial foundation, industrial根基, development advantage", we selected and布局 key tracks for "6+X" future industries, developing six growth-oriented future industries represented by artificial intelligence, embodied intelligence, new energy storage, synthetic biology, advanced materials, and compound semiconductors, and前瞻布局 forward-looking future industries like low-altitude economy, data industry, circular manufacturing, space-air information, hydrogen energy, brain-computer interface, and cell and gene therapy, constructing a new图谱 of future industries with distinct layers and梯次 development. Currently, artificial intelligence is at a critical stage transitioning from technological breakthrough to industrial empowerment. Building upon a solid real economy foundation, Changzhou is actively embracing the AI wave, focusing on "AI+Manufacturing", leveraging its advantages in rich industrial scenarios, and integrally promoting the integrated development of data, computing power, models, scenarios, and ecology. On January 4 this year, our city hosted the National Intelligent Agent Developer Conference and the "AI+" Work Promotion Meeting, specifically establishing an AI special fund with a total scale of 5 billion yuan and an initial phase of 1 billion yuan, competing to become a national demonstration city for "Intelligent Agent + Scenario Application". On February 9, we held a conference on promoting the construction of a modern industrial system, encouraging and incentivizing enterprises to actively embrace the AI wave. To date, Changzhou has over 100 manufacturing enterprises involved in AI and intelligent terminal products, achieving a core AI industry scale of nearly 10 billion yuan, and aims to突破 40 billion yuan in core AI industry scale by 2028. In the era of the digital economy, industrial boundaries are increasingly blurring, integration is accelerating, traditional industries are moving towards mid-to-high end, and emerging industries are opening new tracks, generating massive amounts of industrial data and diverse application demands daily. We are全力 promoting the "two-way奔赴" of AI and the real economy,深入 implementing the "AI+" action, establishing two major platforms – the Chinese Association for Artificial Intelligence Yangtze River Delta Innovation Base and the Xitaihu (Changzhou) Artificial Intelligence Industry Technology Research Institute,推进 a new round of intelligent transformation, digitalization, and networking, launching the country's first OPC (One-Person Company / Super Individual) international community, supporting enterprises in using AI to drive technology R&D, engineering implementation, and product落地, promoting AI empowerment across countless industries, helping广大 enterprises transform顺势 and ride the wind, accelerating the realization of overtaking on the curve.
Highlighting the expansion of domestic demand, deepening the integrated development of culture, commerce, tourism, and sports. Over the past year, Changzhou gained prominence through the火爆 "Jiangsu Super League", demonstrating strong cultural tourism consumption vitality. This year, Changzhou places "highlighting the expansion of domestic demand,切实 stabilizing the basic economic盘" at the top of its eight major tasks. How will Changzhou further expand effective demand and smooth the良性循环 of the economy? Over the past year, Changzhou firmly grasped the primary task of high-quality development, went all out to expand domestic demand and stabilize growth, accelerated the integration of culture, commerce, tourism, and sports, saw the "Jiangsu Super League" arena continuously "break circles", with 6 home games directly拉动 consumption of 1.5 billion yuan, and continuously enhanced the city's知名度,美誉度, and吸引力. Next, we will seriously implement the spirit of the National Two Sessions and the Central Economic Work Conference, unwaveringly place expanding domestic demand first, vigorously implement special actions to boost consumption, continuously stimulate consumption vitality, and切实 stabilize the basic economic盘. On one hand, we will strengthen coordination with the latest national and provincial policies, ensure the implementation of policies like trade-ins for consumer goods, better leverage consumption in automobiles, home appliances, furniture, smart terminals, further clear consumption bottlenecks, and smooth market circulation. On the other hand, we will deepen the integrated development of culture, commerce, tourism, and sports, actively create consumption scenarios like首发,首店,首秀,首展, vigorously develop consumption formats like live-streaming e-commerce and instant retail, seize golden opportunities like important holidays and "Jiangsu Super League" game days, carefully carry out cultural tourism consumption promotion activities, create more全链条 consumption models covering "food, accommodation, transportation, travel, shopping, entertainment", and continuously ignite consumption enthusiasm.
Not long ago, the draft "Shanghai Metropolitan Circle Land and Space Plan (2025~2035)" was公示. As an important member of the Shanghai Metropolitan Circle, what opportunities do you believe this will bring to Changzhou? How can Changzhou更深入地对接 Shanghai to achieve协同 development? As an important part of the Yangtze River Delta city cluster, Changzhou has always regarded integration into the Shanghai Metropolitan Circle as a major opportunity for urban development. We have continuously held the Changzhou-Shanghai Economic and Trade Week for 20 years, actively promoted exchanges and cooperation in economy, trade, technology, culture, and other aspects, laying a solid foundation and achieving fruitful results in沪常对接 cooperation. The release of this draft "Plan" will provide Changzhou with a broader development platform and link to higher-quality resource elements in multiple fields such as transportation construction, industrial development, technological innovation, and cultural tourism. We will actively对接 and implement, actively协同 and collaborate, strive to be a good participant and builder in the development of the Shanghai Metropolitan Circle, and jointly write a new chapter in the integrated development of the Yangtze River Delta. Specifically, we will deepen沪常 industrial collaboration. The two cities of Shanghai and Changzhou have strong industrial complementarity and close cooperative exchanges. A number of Shanghai enterprises, such as SAIC Motor, United Imaging Healthcare, and Putailai, have invested and built factories in Changzhou. Relying on Changzhou's industrial ecological advantages, they have rapidly achieved scaled mass production. We will more actively integrate into Shanghai's industrial chain, undertake industrial spillover, deepen the联动 development of "Shanghai Headquarters, Changzhou Base", and better promote the climb of both cities' industries towards the high end of the global industrial chain and value chain. Simultaneously, we will promote沪常 sci-tech integration. Seizing the major opportunity of the expansion of the Shanghai International Sci-Tech Innovation Center to the Yangtze River Delta, we will build常态化对接 platforms, deepen cooperation with Shanghai in technological innovation, industry-university-research collaboration, expand the "Shanghai R&D + Changzhou Manufacturing" model, and accelerate the transition of scientific research成果 from the laboratory to the market. We will continuously iterate innovation policies, attract more Shanghai talents to innovate and start businesses in Changzhou, support Shanghai industrial funds, equity investment institutions, and others to develop in Changzhou, and help more Changzhou enterprises leverage capital markets to achieve裂变 growth. Furthermore, we will promote沪常 consumption linkage. Changzhou has a long history and culture, abundant landscape resources, and has ranked first in national music festival city box office for three consecutive years. We will actively对接 and introduce Shanghai enterprises to invest in and operate cultural tourism projects in Changzhou, jointly developing high-quality resources. At the same time, we will carefully conduct city promotion, attract more Shanghai residents to visit and enjoy Changzhou, and continuously release the potential of cultural tourism consumption.
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