Home to unicorns like Tencent, Huawei and BYD Semiconductor, Shenzhen now has the highest number of startups per head of population in China
The number of newly registered companies in Shenzhen jumped 10.4% in the first six months of 2021 as the city kept its pole position in China for startups. From January to June, there were 258,449 newly registered commercial entities in the city. Based on the official resident population of 17.5601 million, the city has 208.6 commercial entities and 131.5 enterprises per thousand people, ranking number one in the country.
Newly registered commercial entities were concentrated in the services industry, accounting for more than 90% of the total. From January to May, the operating income of the city’s for-profit service industry increased by 26.1%, an average increase of 15.1% in the two years. Among strategic emerging industries, there were 17,074 registrations of “new generation information technology” companies, a year-on-year increase of 82.3%.
Shenzhen’s economy pushed back closer to its pre-pandemic growth in the first half of this year, despite a blip in June caused by a Covid-19 outbreak in Guangdong. With GDP rising 9.7% in the first half of 2020, that equated to a 4.8% rise on two-year comparison with the same period in 2019. It’s not yet the 6% mark that Shenzhen had been comfortable with pre-pandemic, but the bright spot appears to be the development of new strategic industries and the services sector.
According to the Shenzhen Municipal Bureau of Statistics, 20 strategic emerging industrial clusters grew 13% to generate output of RMB 563.086 billion (GDP 62.5 billion) in the first half, accounting for 39.3% of the city’s GDP. The star was high-end equipment manufacturing, up 44.1%, while the marine economy rose 30.9%. A broad category called “digital and fashion” rose 23.9%, while new materials was up 22.5%. There was also positive news on the green front, as low-carbon industries jumped by 19.9%.
Industrial robots had a good boost, up 79.5%, an average increase of 61.5% in two years; the output of new energy vehicles and charging piles increased by 3.28 times and 1.21 times, respectively, with an average increase of 30.4% and 66.8% in two years; the output of 3D printing equipment increased by 32.4%, an average increase of 1.38 times in the two years.
This post was originally published by our content partner Greater Bay Insight
