Zhou Lin: Making Every Effort to Build a Vibrant and Innovative City
Innovation is the primary engine driving development and the core motor propelling urban modernization.
In July 2025, the Central Urban Work Conference was convened in Beijing, where General Secretary Xi Jinping delivered a major speech. The conference placed innovation at the forefront of the goal to build modern People's Cities and listed the vigorous construction of dynamic, innovative cities as a key task of urban work, highlighting the critical role of innovation in promoting high-quality development. Looking globally, a new round of technological revolution and industrial transformation is developing in depth, profoundly reshaping the global landscape of innovation and the economic order. As hubs for the concentration of innovative activities, cities have become the primary battlefield for global developmental competition. Against this backdrop, placing innovation at the heart of overall urban development, meticulously cultivating innovation ecosystems, accelerating the development of new quality productive forces, and building dynamic, innovative cities is not only an intrinsic requirement for high-quality urban development but also a strategic choice to shape national competitive advantages and seize the initiative for future development.
Deeply Understanding the Contemporary Significance of Innovative Cities
Building innovative cities must be rooted in the overall situation while grasping key elements, and requires a profound understanding of their rich contemporary significance.
We must uphold the fundamental stance of being people-centered. General Secretary Xi Jinping has pointed out that "People's Cities are built by the people and for the people," [1] emphasizing the value orientation for building modern People's Cities and pointing the way for the construction of innovative cities. In building innovative cities, we must earnestly practice the "People's City" concept, focusing closely on the comprehensive development of the person and overall social progress. We must take the maintenance, realization, and development of the fundamental interests of the broadest masses of the people as the starting point and end goal of all work. By constructing robust and compassionate systems and mechanisms to support comprehensive innovation, we can stimulate the endogenous power and innovative vitality of the entire society, creating an environment where everyone participates, everyone contributes, and everyone shares in innovation.
We must strengthen a strategic orientation toward systemic integration. With the accelerated iteration of new technologies, new drivers, and new models, the complexity of innovation activities is showing a non-linear growth trend. Cross-field, cross-disciplinary, and cross-subject integration is deepening, placing higher demands on the construction of innovative cities. General Secretary Xi Jinping has emphasized that "in planning and advancing reform, we must persist in a systemic view and an overall perspective, strengthen strategic and dialectical thinking, prioritize tasks based on urgency, and pay greater attention to systemic integration." To this end, we should utilize scientific and rational top-level design to systematically grasp the key links of urban innovation, promoting the free flow and efficient allocation of innovation factors—such as knowledge, technology, talent, and capital. We must strengthen the organic connection between "basic research, technological breakthroughs, product development, and industrial application," achieving the coordinated advancement of the innovation, industrial, capital, and talent chains to build an open and prosperous urban innovation ecosystem.
We must promote the integration of humanistic and technological values. General Secretary Xi Jinping has noted: "A modern People's City should be a city where material and spiritual civilizations are coordinated; the construction process must be rooted in fine traditional Chinese culture and manifest Chinese character and style." The construction of innovative cities must transcend the simplistic logic of "technological supremacy." It must profoundly grasp the dialectical relationship between the humanities and technology as a relationship where "substance and utility are integrated, and the Way and tools complement each other" [2]. We must guide technology toward the good through the humanistic spirit, injecting socialist core values and traditional Chinese moral concepts into frontier technological innovation. Conversely, we must enrich the humanistic foundation through technological innovation, using innovative expression to better integrate the city's spirit and cultural lineage into modern life, forming a development model where the humanities and technology shine together and enhance one another.
Working in Synergy to Advance the Construction of Innovative Cities
From the perspective of high-quality development, the construction of innovative cities must both carry the people’s aspirations for a better life and provide strong support for high-level self-reliance and self-strengthening in science and technology. This is a complex systematic project involving multiple levels, actors, and dimensions. Therefore, based on urban realities, we should work synergistically across five dimensions—innovation resources, innovation spaces, innovation scenarios, innovation services, and innovation culture—applying precise policies to ensure that urban innovation work is implemented effectively.
First, we must strengthen the coordination of innovation resources. On one hand, we should build a dual-track urban innovation driver system of "integrated industry-university-research-application + integrated education-technology-talent." We support leading science and technology enterprises in playing a dominant role, using the deep integration of technological and industrial innovation as a lead to collaborate with universities, research institutes, and upstream/downstream enterprises to jointly build high-level innovation consortia with flexible mechanisms, shared benefits, and shared risks. Simultaneously, based on urban characteristics and advantages, we should promote the precise alignment of disciplinary construction and scientific research with the modern industrial system, guiding universities and research institutes to dynamically optimize disciplinary settings and talent planning to match the city's medium-to-long-term development needs. On the other hand, we should promote the clustered and networked allocation of urban innovation resources on a larger spatial scale. We should explore the establishment of normalized coordination and benefit-sharing mechanisms at the level of city clusters and metropolitan areas, efficiently aggregating regional innovation resources through various models such as joint innovation consortia, shared major scientific research infrastructure, joint industrial clusters, joint "innovation enclaves," [3] and joint talent cultivation.
Second, we must create high-quality innovation spaces. On one hand, we should enhance the innovation "source" capacity of development zones. We support these zones in building a multi-level technological innovation platform system around leading industries, focusing on "bottleneck" [4] problems and key core technologies. We should adopt organized assault models such as "task list systems," "horse racing," [5] and "open competition for selecting best candidates" [6], and strive to shape a collaborative innovation ecosystem where leading science and technology enterprises, "hidden champions," and specialized, high-end, and innovation-driven "Little Giant" enterprises [7] develop in harmony. We must prioritize spatial guarantees for major scientific infrastructure and high-growth innovation entities, and establish mechanisms for the rational conversion of industrial land and R&D design land. On the other hand, we should explore the construction of innovation-ecosystem communities, creating urban community units driven by innovation where talent is concentrated and functions are complete.
Third, we must cultivate diverse innovation scenarios. On one hand, we should advance the layout of innovation scenarios across the entire city and all fields. Following a lead-by-scenario and application-oriented approach, we should create application scenarios for new technologies and products in key areas such as cultivating new drivers, creating high-quality living spaces, promoting green and low-carbon transitions, and enhancing security and resilience. Simultaneously, we should focus on implementing large-scale scenario renewals during urban regeneration actions, empowering the functional enhancement of existing spaces—such as old factories and inefficient buildings—to create new scenarios with a "tech vibe" that manifest both historical memory and future vision. On the other hand, we should establish a normalized mechanism for discovering and matching innovation scenarios, supporting lead departments in publicly releasing "opportunity lists" and "capability lists" to reduce market transaction costs and shorten the cultivation cycle for new technologies.
Fourth, we must build a full-lifecycle innovation service system. On one hand, we should strengthen the consciousness of proactive service, providing integrated and personalized services to innovation entities. Based on the "efficiently completing a single matter" [8] initiative, we should advance the "continuously completing a series of matters" approach. We must construct a technology-finance support system, strengthening the leading role of government investment funds and creating clusters of "patient capital" in innovation hubs to attract global capital. On the other hand, focusing on "attracting, cultivating, retaining, and utilizing," we should provide integrated services for innovative talent. We must smooth career paths, support young talent in "taking the lead and playing the protagonist," [9] and improve the profit-sharing mechanisms for the transformation of scientific and technological achievements. We should build an evaluation system that emphasizes ability, actual results, and contributions, stimulating the internal drive of innovative talent.
Fifth, we must foster a characteristic innovation culture. On one hand, we should shape a city atmosphere that prizes science, respects talent, and encourages innovation. We should vigorously promote the spirit of scientists and craftsmen, creating a favorable environment that encourages exploration and tolerates failure. We should deepen the reform of science education in primary and secondary schools, moving the cultivation of innovation culture forward to the basic education stage and encouraging scientists and engineers to enter the classroom. On the other hand, we should inherit the "innovation genes" found in fine traditional Chinese culture. By deeply tapping into the innovative wisdom contained in cultural relics and heritage, we can shape a characteristic innovation culture where tradition and modernity blend. This will enhance citizens' sense of identity and belonging, creating a city that is both rooted in its past and oriented toward a dynamic, innovative future.