In the late autumn, the port park of Ningguo Economic Development Zone in Xuancheng City, Anhui Province, is a hive of activity. On October 12, a reporter entered the production workshop of Anhui Hongqiao Air Suspension Technology Co., Ltd. and found all production lines operating at full capacity. Amid the rumble of machines, finished air spring pistons moved quickly through stamping, welding, machining, and inspection, were swiftly packed into boxes, and prepared for export to places such as Germany.

"From leading the national standard for oil-seal springs to the publication of two industry standards for air spring pistons and cover plates, we have continuously increased technological innovation and have invested over 50 million yuan in R&D," company deputy general manager Li Hongjie told the reporter. Starting as a township spring factory, Anhui Hongqiao went through four key transformations and upgrades. Today, with 58 patented technologies, it has successfully opened the door to the world’s top supply chains; international orders now account for over 35%, marking an industrial leap from "domestic substitution" to "technology feeding back."

With the vigorous promotion of hardcore scientific and technological innovation, Ningguo's innovation ecosystem—where government, industry, universities, and research institutes deeply integrate—has gradually taken shape. The competitiveness of key enterprises has significantly improved. Through a collaborative mechanism of "demand-oriented + institute-driven problem tackling," 80% of automotive parts companies have developed a batch of core products with independent intellectual property rights, building an innovation matrix from basic materials to intelligent manufacturing. Among them: Zhongding's oil seal for electric drive systems can meet the bidirectional high-speed rotation requirement of up to 20,000 rpm, reaching world-leading levels; Asimco has become the first company in Asia and the second in the world to achieve mass production of deburred flangeless rubber cups for automotive parts; Baolong's valve stems rank first in a global niche market, and its exhaust tailpipe components and balance weights rank among the top two globally in production and sales scale; Datwyler has grown into the largest domestic manufacturer in the passenger vehicle brake-system rubber products sector.

As the only provincially administered municipality in our province bordering both Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, Xuancheng is located at the geographic center of the Yangtze River Delta and at the radiating center of the four major metropolitan circles of Shanghai–Nanjing–Hangzhou–Hefei, making it truly the "heart of the Yangtze River Delta" and an important node city of the G60 Science and Innovation Corridor. How can Anhui leverage its role as a "bridgehead" and "vanguard" in deeply integrating into the Yangtze River Delta to promote high-quality development through innovation? Xuancheng focuses on accelerating technological innovation and industrial transformation and upgrading, strengthening support for necessary factors, and pursuing a dual approach of an effective market and an active government. By nurturing high-quality "seeds," cultivating fertile "soil," and creating a suitable "climate," it seeks to grow a "scientific-innovation rainforest" and promote deep integration across innovation chains, industrial chains, talent chains, and capital chains to build a modern industrial system with Xuancheng characteristics.

To accelerate the formation of a "scientific-innovation rainforest," Xuancheng took the provincial lead in implementing a technology enterprise "doubling" initiative and established a tiered cultivation mechanism of "technology-based SMEs → high-tech enterprises → specialized and sophisticated ('specialized, refined, differential, and novel') enterprises." Since the start of this year, the city has set up 40 new provincial-level enterprise R&D centers, bringing the total to 127—ranked second in the province; in the first half of the year, 702 national-level technology-based SMEs were newly added to the roster, ranking sixth in the province; and the value added by high-tech industries accounted for 59.9% of the value added by industrial enterprises above designated size, ranking fourth in the province.

As the "scientific-innovation rainforest" thrives, industrial development is surging, with automotive parts in particular becoming "towering trees." To date, the city has gathered over 700 automotive parts enterprises; output value in 2024 surpassed 85 billion yuan, and it has cultivated leading companies such as Zhongding, Baolong, and Luxshare Precision.

Alongside the "towering trees" there are also "dense groves." Xuancheng Luxshare Precision Industry Co., Ltd., located in Xuancheng High-tech Zone, has leveraged an efficient collaborative model between technological innovation and manufacturing. By comprehensively applying AI, automation, and digital technologies to build an integrated intelligent control platform and continuously converting technological breakthroughs into results, it has become a first-class domestic automotive parts enterprise. Leading the charge, the company has attracted 12 upstream and downstream supporting enterprises to cluster in Xuancheng High-tech Zone, jointly conducting R&D and forming an industrial cluster.

Enterprises are the main bodies of innovation. Xuancheng has implemented a high-tech enterprise cultivation project, pioneered the "High-tech Enterprise Cultivation Service Guide," and carried out the "three batches" plan: incubate and cultivate a batch, attract and introduce a batch via "attracting investment and talents," and improve a batch through the Thousand Enterprises Update Initiative. So far, 93.2% of R&D personnel in the city are concentrated in enterprises, 97.8% of provincial-level and above R&D institutions are established within enterprises, and 95.7% of scientific and technological achievements originate from enterprises.

To promote deep industrial integration, Xuancheng established a pairing mechanism of "universities + parks + enterprises + industrial chains" and took the provincial lead in launching a new talent-attraction model of "technology vice presidents," appointing 44 "technology VPs" to 35 key enterprises. Over the past three years, these "technology VPs" have annually collected and screened more than 300 enterprise technical needs and research problems, facilitated the signing of 15 industry-university-research-application agreements between their enterprises and universities, and helped counterpart enterprises apply for 11 provincial key R&D projects and special projects.

Today, within Xuancheng’s "scientific-innovation rainforest," the various "key variables" of technological innovation are being converted at an unprecedented speed and scale into the largest incremental drivers of Xuancheng’s high-quality development. In 2024, enterprises in Xuancheng independently carried out 3,719 R&D projects. From January to July this year, the total value of technology-related contracts absorbed by enterprises in the city reached 4.18 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 164.6%, ranking first in the province.

Source: Anhui Daily