The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has set up a quasi-corporate venturing fund to managed by its affiliate, Oriental Scientific Instrument Corporation.
The CAS Jiahe Venture Capital Fund was set up by the academy in the first industrial technology centre in north-eastern China’s Harbin city.
The centre, located in a science and technology innovation park, will have three to four industrial technology innovation platforms for more than 10 research teams from the Chinese Academy of Sciences by next year.
Three to five engineering technology centres are also expected to be built to carry out at least 15 industrial projects, which are estimated to achieve more than RMB3bn ($460m) in sales.
The first 12 projects are involved in intelligent monitoring, pollution control processes, micro-power systems and the internet of things and will receive RMB720m from the local government.
Separately, one of the founding fathers of Chinese venture capital, Liu Chuanzhi, chairman of computer maker Lenovo and its corporate venturing unit Legend Capital, said innovation was a priority for the country.
In an interview with news provider San Francisco Chronicle, Liu said: "The Chinese government has attached exceptional prominence to innovation.
"There’s a neighborhood in Beijing called Zhongguancun, and this neighborhood is where most of the universities and research institutes are located. The area is now home to a lot of people who studied abroad and went back to China.
"Also, it gets a lot of venture capital and the government is also giving it preferential treatment. We would call it an incubator neighborhood. Quite a number of the Chinese companies that have now gone on and have been listed on Nasdaq started in Zhongguancun."
Liu added that there were potential headwinds to its development. To the SF Chronicle he said: "Chinese enterprises are still facing many, many different problems just as American companies are. As China continues to develop, it’s really going to come up against the problem of a lack of resources. Also, social polarization in China is becoming a very serious problem and the question of how the government is going to keep tabs on itself and overcome the problem of corruption.
"Also in 10 years, China is going to be up against the issue of an aging population. That’s a very serious problem. So it’s not going to be easy for the Chinese government to figure out before these problems come to a head exactly how to deal with them.
"So that’s why to me, I have pretty much no reaction to how many patents are filed in China or whether China is the second-biggest or third-biggest economy in the world."
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