Landmark international innovation and entrepreneurship competition concludes in China’s Chongqing with top prize worth 100 mln yuan

Chongqing Liangjiang Collaborative Innovation Zone Mingyue Lake International Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition concluded Thursday in Chongqing Liangjiang New Area. Contestants across the country leveraged their ideas and proposals to win industrial support totaling 300 million yuan and start-up fund worth 500 million yuan.

The competition, one of the country’s biggest science and innovation contests, focuses on the four major tracks, including high-end intelligent manufacturing, high-end biomedicine, semiconductor and intelligent information technology, and new energy and new materials.

The event seeks to introduce and cultivate innovative leading talent teams and high-quality projects, accelerate the gathering of high-end innovative elements, create a full-factor and full-chain innovation ecosystem, and help the new area play a better leading and exemplary role in the scientific and technological innovation of Chongqing.

Since the competition was officially launched in June, it has attracted nearly 2,000 teams (projects) from home and abroad with seven city promotion roadshows. More than 60 authoritative venture capital institutions and hundreds of well-known investors participated in the competition.

After seven months of heated competition, the micro-nano additive manufacturing technology industrialization project won the special prize of the competition, and received a landing support award of 100 million yuan. In addition, the competition also selected one first prize, two second prizes, four third prizes, 10 winning prizes and 10 innovation prizes, which were awarded 50 million yuan, 20 million yuan, 10 million yuan, 5 million yuan and 2 million yuan respectively.

As the first national-level development and opening up new area in the inland region, Chongqing Liangjiang New Area accounts for less than 1.5 percent of the city’s area, but generated 15 percent of its GDP. To be specific, during the 13th Five-Year Plan period, the GDP of the new area increased by 7.5 percent annually and reached 367.5 billion yuan in 2020, with the total large-scale industrial output exceeding 450 billion yuan.

In recent years, Chongqing Liangjiang New Area has actively laid out the ecological layout of scientific and technological innovation, adhered to the idea of “scientific innovation + industry”, and focused on attracting worldwide enterprises and teams with advanced innovation achievements in related fields, breakthroughs in core key technologies and good industrialization prospects. Up to now, 40 universities, colleges and institutes at home and abroad have been introduced. The new area is developing collaborative innovation in a green manner, gathering a large number of advanced technologies and innovative talents for Chongqing.

At present, Chongqing Liangjiang New Area is speeding up the construction of the core bearing area of innovation centers with national influence. The Liangjiang Collaborative Innovation Zone will be built into an influential highland for gathering global innovation elements, a highland for promoting collaborative innovation and cooperation among universities, colleges and institutes, an important source of scientific and technological innovation, industrial innovation and emerging industries.

Source: Chongqing Liangjiang New Area