CHINA TOPIX

05/18/2024 12:27:32 am

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China Looks to Innovators, Entrepreneurs to Keep Economy Competitive

Young Entrepreneur

(Photo : Getty Images/Linto Zhang) Lei Jun (center), one of China's top young entrepreneurs, is seen above walking amid a crowd of IT entrepreneurs outside the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China. Many Chinese startup entrepreneurs say simplified business registration procedures and government subsidies have helped bring about the rise of a new entrepreneurial class throughout China, and Beijing is banking on that class to keep the economy buoyant.

Policymakers in Beijing are promoting homegrown innovation and entrepreneurship to buttress China's tottered economy, according to state-run news agency Xinhua.

In a statement issued at the conclusion of Beijing's latest economic work conference, the Chinese government declared that it would continue building on innovation and entrepreneurship to further the country's economic development. 

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The declaration is no mere sloganeering.  The country produced an astonishing 11,700 new companies every day for 11 straight months last year.  The first three months of that startup boom saw China churning out new billionaires almost each week. 

However, China is undergoing a difficult transition.  Gone are the dizzying expansion of labor and investments that powered economic growth over the past three decades; and some analysts have questioned just how much China's innovators can contribute to the effort to stabilize the country's economy at this point. New research by the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) indicates that -- in order to achieve the consensus growth forecast of 5.5 to 6.5 percent a year -- China's innovators must contribute at least two to three percentage points to the gross domestic product (GDP) each year for the next ten years. 

That is a tall order, but the government has in the past demonstrated the ability to create opportunities that make innovation and entrepreneurship profitable.  China is home to some 213 of the 1,826 people on the 2015 Forbes Billionaires List, and -- if Beijing has its way -- more Chinese entrepreneurs will be added to that list this year. 

"We are very optimistic that in the next five to 10 years [the number of] Asian billionaires will surpass the US because of the high growth opportunities in this part of the world," said Francis Liu of UBS Wealth Management in an interview with CNN.     

The opportunities are as many as they are varied.  The MGI says that, with proper support, the most innovative of China's entrepreneurs can contribute as much as $3 trillion to $5 trillion a year to the GDP by 2025.  This is not lost on China's top policymakers, who are currently fine-tuning the country's policies to encourage a more vibrant and creative entrepreneurial sector.  Beijing plows around $200 billion a year into research that supports the creation of new drugs and automobile engines.  The figure is around $35 billion more than what it allocates for China's entire military force.  The country likewise leads the world in patent applications even as its schools and universities turn out some 30,000 PhD holders in science and engineering each year.

Many Chinese startup entrepreneurs say simplified business registration procedures and government subsidies have helped bring about the rise of a new entrepreneurial class throughout China, and Beijing is banking on that class to keep the economy buoyant.  Tech savvy, confident and highly educated, the members of this new class of innovators and business managers are eager to take advantage of the increasingly propitious policy environment. 

But Yi Wang, co founder of Liu Li Shuo, a company that developed an English app for Chinese smartphone users, told the Financial Times that the lure of success is perhaps the biggest incentive of all for entrepreneurial creativity, especially in a milieu where the internet has gained ubiquitous prominence. 

"Definitely, you're seeing an increasing trend in entrepreneurship in China," Wang says, adding that top-tier venture capital firms are currently looking for young, forward-looking entrepreneurs. "In recent years companies that have been making the biggest impact on people's lives are internet companies and behind them encouraging stories about ordinary people making it big." 

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