Seeing the Forest and the Trees: Navigating China's Industry Park Innovation Engine

China’s landscape of industry parks is as complex as it is enormous. There are different functions served, from manufacturing to technology incubation, and with very different levels of government involvement at the central and provincial levels. We have captured, categorized, and analyzed the 1,531 provincial and national-level industry parks across the country based on location, technology capability, technology focus, and domestic and foreign content. For technology scouts, the report represents a beginner’s guide, revealing the need for a specific focus on 87 university science parks and tough decisions on how broadly efforts should focus geographically. Companies looking to establish R&D or manufacturing facilities will rapidly be able to navigate to locations where incentives and resources for growth are in place, and where centers of excellence may already exist in key emerging technology areas for biosciences, new energy, advanced materials, and electronics. Looking forward, policies are now rolling out that will only reinforce the importance of industry parks to China’s innovation capacity.