Beijing has been stepping up efforts to develop "three science cities and one area" to move toward its goal of becoming an international science and technology innovation center in China with global influence, given its advantages in technology and talent.

The city's overall development plan for 2016-35 said the Zhongguancun Science City, Huairou Science City and Future Science City, as well as the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area, or Beijing E-Town, in Daxing district, have become major platforms for frontier research and innovative businesses, providing strategic support for realizing greater self-reliance and strength in high-level science and technology activities.

Covering less than 6 percent of Beijing's city area, these areas contribute about one-third of the capital's annual GDP, official statistics showed. In 2021, they were home to 31.8 percent of the city's total research companies, and about 60 percent of the city's R&D expenses went to the three science cities and Beijing E-Town.

Over the past five years, they have witnessed a number of heavyweight sci-tech achievements in such sectors as artificial intelligence, quantum information, cutting-edge biotechnology, key materials and integrated circuits.

Zhongguancun Science City in Haidian district not only stands out as the symbol of innovation in Beijing, but also serves as a core area to boost national sci-tech development.

It is home to prestigious universities such as Peking University, Tsinghua University and University of Chinese Academy of Sciences. It boasts new types of research institutions including the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei National Center of Technology Innovation, the Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence, the Beijing Academy of Quantum Information Sciences, and the Beijing Academy of Blockchain and Edge Computing.

Zhongguancun has been optimizing the innovation and entrepreneurship ecology, with emerging innovation carriers such as university science parks and innovative incubators, and intensive innovation elements of equity investment institutions, intellectual property service agencies and industrial alliances and associations.

Last year, the science city saw the launch of the world's biggest super-large-scale intelligent model in "Enlightenment 2.0". The parameter scale of this model reached 1.75 trillion, breaking the 1.6 trillion parameter record previously created by the Google Switch Transformer.

It also owns a long-life superconducting qubit chip. Qubit, or quantum bit, is the basic unit of information in quantum computing. For Enlightenment 2.0, the decoherence time of the qubit has reached 503 microseconds, setting a new world record.

The Beijing Academy of Blockchain and Edge Computing has released independent and controllable blockchain software and a hardware technology system, "Chang'an chain 2.2", which can fight against traditional cryptographic and quantum attacks.

In recent years, Zhongguancun Science City has further optimized its layout of advanced and sophisticated industries, constantly upgraded the innovation ecosystem, and hosted the Zhongguancun Forum to promote interconnected development with other platforms.

The Nature Index Science Cities 2021, for example, published during last year's Zhongguancun Forum, ranked Beijing the top global science city for the fourth consecutive year after factoring in the concentration of talent, funding, research institutions, and the quality of published scientific papers and international cooperation.

In the first half of the year, the total revenue of high-tech enterprises above designated size in Zhongguancun Science City hit 1.6 trillion yuan ($220.8 billion), the total output value of industries above designated size hit 144.6 billion yuan, 0.7 percentage points higher than the city's growth year-on-year; and newly registered sci-tech enterprises numbered 9,863, ranking first in the city.

In Future Science City, the future science and technology innovation center was recently approved as a State-level makerspace. It is the first national honor won by the center, and provides new development opportunities to the science city.

The construction of 29 scientific facilities and platforms in Huairou Science City is progressing smoothly. Beijing E-Town put an emphasis on undertaking the transformation of sci-tech achievements from the three science cities, in a bid to cultivate new drivers of economic development for the city.