The Zhejiang visit, themed "Digital Intelligence Empowering Better Lives," kicked off in Hangzhou, China, bringing together 11 think tank scholars and media professionals from ASEAN countries, including Malaysia, Indonesia, Laos, Myanmar, and Vietnam, alongside their Chinese counterparts. As part of this program, the delegation visited the Hangzhou Future Science and Technology City, an essential industrial platform in the Yuhang District, recognized as the core, demonstration, and leading zone of the 39-kilometer Hangzhou West Science and Technology Innovation Corridor.
Hangzhou Future Science and Technology City, established in 2011 within the Yuhang District, functions as a critical industrial platform supporting the national strategy of Yangtze River Delta integration. The city operates under the core service philosophy: "I am responsible for providing sunshine. rain and dew while, you are responsible for blossoming and flourishing," which has guided its successful transformation from "watery countryside and rice fields" into a talent-centric, rainforest-style innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem.
Adhering to the strategy of "Innovation-driven, talent-led, industry-city integration," HFTC has achieved rapid development, recording an average annual growth rate of nearly 39% in enterprise revenue and tax collection. The encompassing Yuhang District is recognized as Zhejiang’s top economic district, achieving a GDP of 335.567 billion CNY in 2024, with the digital economy core industry alone contributing 68.5%.
HFTC was built "for talent and prospering because of talent," aiming to construct a globally significant talent center and innovation high ground. The talent pool now exceeds 450,000, representing 30% of the resident population, and the average age of professionals has dropped sharply from 42 in 2011 to 32 currently. HFTC attracts over one-fifth of the provincial-level and above leading talents in Hangzhou. To support entrepreneurship, HFTC pioneered the "Talent Loan" in 2019, the province's first non-collateral, non-guarantee, 24/7 real-time loan system. Additionally, HFTC maintains overseas liaison stations in seven countries and regions to recruit top international personnel. The city operates crucial innovation platforms, including the national-level incubator Dream Town, which has fostered 3,608 projects, and the Nanhu Science Center, which is home to key research hubs like the Zhejiang Lab (AI and network information) and Hupan Lab (data science and applications).
The industrial structure centers on two core leading industries—Digital Economy and Life Health—and is actively constructing the strategic "1+3+X" future industry system. This system focuses on upgrading Digital Economy, Bio-medicine, and Intelligent Manufacturing (the '1'), while leading three future tracks: Future Information, Future Space, and Future Health (the '3'), with the goal of exceeding 500 billion CNY in future industry scale by 2028. The Future Information track focuses on 6G, next-generation chips (e.g., CETC Haikang), and intelligent computing, featuring major technology enterprises like Alibaba, ByteDance (Douyin Group), DingTalk, and Vivo.
The Future Space track concentrates on unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) development; HFTC is a national low-altitude economy development pilot city and holds the first national license for urban UAV logistics test routes. The Future Health track drives breakthroughs in future diagnostics and artificial organs, supported by high-level platforms such as the Liangzhu Laboratory and the Nanhu Brain-Computer Interfacing Institute. Furthermore, HFTC has established an Intellectual Property (IP) Park that provides comprehensive, full-chain IP services and ranks first in Zhejiang for total IP securitization issuance and first nationally in annual issuance volume.
In terms of urban infrastructure, HFTC adheres to the development strategy of "first ecology, then life, then production". The Hangzhou West Railway Station, operational since September 2022, serves as the city’s third major transportation hub. The opening of the Huzhou-Shanghai high-speed rail line in December 2024 is projected to reduce the travel time from HFTC to Shanghai to just one hour. Key public facilities include the Future Science and Culture Center, which is under construction and will feature an International Sports Center with a 60,000-seat football stadium, planned for operation by 2027. Comprehensive high-level medical care is provided by the Zhejiang University First Affiliated Hospital Headquarters.
HFTC is the origin point for several internationally recognized technology pioneers. DeepSeek, focused on general AI foundational models, developed DeepSeek-V3, whose total training cost was estimated at only 1/8 to 1/10 of mainstream models, earning it the nickname "Pinduoduo of AI". Its DeepSeek-R1 model achieved the third-highest global ranking on the Chatbot Arena as of January 2025. Unitree Technology is a world leader in high-performance quadruped and humanoid robots, accounting for 60-70% of global quadruped robot shipments. Their universal humanoid robot H1 gained global attention during its performance at the 2025 CCTV Spring Festival Gala. BrainCo is a global frontrunner in non-invasive Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) technology, achieving the highest degree of commercialization globally with 100,000 high-precision devices mass-produced by 2022. Their smart prosthetic hand helped light the main torch at the 2023 Hangzhou Asian Para Games. Lingban Technology, a unicorn specializing in AR glasses, is a global leader whose industrial products have been deployed in the Tiangong space station for over two years. Finally, Game Science developed the first domestic 3A game, Black Myth: Wukong, which sold over 10 million copies in four days following its August 2024 launch, becoming a global phenomenon and winning two TGAs (The Game Awards).
