Recently, Shenzhen’s innovation “report card” was officially released: In 2024, Shenzhen’s R&D investment reached 245.307 billion yuan, ranking second among large and medium-sized cities nationwide; its total foreign trade import and export volume topped all Chinese cities, with exports securing the “32nd consecutive championship”; by the end of 2024, the city’s total industrial output value and industrial added value of industrial enterprises above designated size had ranked first among Chinese cities for three consecutive years; both fixed asset investment and total retail sales of consumer goods exceeded one trillion yuan; the output of new energy vehicles accounted for 22.3% of the national total, and its automobile output rose to the first place among Chinese cities… A series of vivid and impressive data not only directly demonstrate the city’s scientific and technological strength, but also clearly outline Shenzhen’s steady strides in advancing its economy toward “newness” and “high-end” development.
Since the beginning of this year, amid an unstable and uncertain international environment, Shenzhen’s economy has maintained vigorous vitality, depicting an upward curve toward “newness” and “high-end” development. The new quality productive forces are accelerating their formation, high-level opening-up is continuously expanding, and the vitality of high-quality development is surging, as the city moves faster to build itself into an economically influential central city and a modern international metropolis with greater global reach. Statistics show that in the first three quarters, Shenzhen’s regional gross domestic product (GDP) reached 2,789.644 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 5.5%.
Innovation Accumulation: Activating the Engine of New Quality Productive Forces
In 2024, Shenzhen’s R&D investment stood at 245.307 billion yuan, ranking second among large and medium-sized cities nationwide; its R&D intensity hit 6.67%, topping all large and medium-sized cities in China.
With leaps in R&D investment and leading growth in basic research funding; product innovations gaining global attention and leading enterprises ranking high in R&D input; cutting-edge achievements being quickly implemented to unleash growth vitality, and various innovation carriers smoothing the transformation chain… Shenzhen, with original innovation as the foundation, sustained R&D investment as the support, and achievement transformation as the starting point, continues to enhance the innovation vitality of its urban economy.
Enterprises are the absolute main force of innovation. BYD rolled off its 14 millionth new energy vehicle in Brazil, marking a new stage in its global development; Wanliyan launched the world’s leading 90GHz ultra-high-speed real-time oscilloscope, adding a “Chinese benchmark” option to the global industrial chain; Honor officially released its AI “1×3×N” ecological strategy, enabling small enterprises to embrace AI through the AI industrial internet platform.
Focusing on basic research, Shenzhen has continuously accumulated innovation achievements from 0 to 1. Earlier this year, the high-pressure neutron spectrometer and high-resolution high-flux neutron powder diffractometer at the Shenzhen Materials Genome Large Science Facility Platform completed process acceptance and were put into operation. So far, the platform has completed more than 600 sample tests, serving over 50 user units including enterprises, universities, and research institutes.
Relying on the experimental platforms provided by important facilities such as the Phase II of the National Supercomputing Center in Shenzhen, synthetic biology, and brain parsing and brain simulation, Shenzhen has concentrated efforts on basic scientific research and continued to tackle key problems. In 2024, Shenzhen’s basic research funding reached 11.591 billion yuan, an increase of 21.2%, 11.5 percentage points higher than the growth rate of the city’s total R&D funding; the proportion of basic research in R&D funding reached 4.7%, an increase of 0.4 percentage points over the previous year.
Shenzhen not only strengthens its own innovation engine but also promotes collaborative innovation in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. In June this year, Shenzhen and Dongguan jointly established the Science Alliance of the Pilot Zone of the Greater Bay Area Comprehensive National Science Center. Through cross-regional, cross-institutional, and interdisciplinary cooperation, the two cities have strengthened the co-construction and sharing of innovation resources and promoted the production of more original innovation achievements.
By increasing the supply of high-quality scientific and technological achievements and strengthening the construction of strategic scientific and technological forces, Shenzhen has established institutional mechanisms for nurturing excellence, collaborative linkage, and open sharing, striving to build a source of original innovation.
Reform Breakthroughs: Unleashing the Driving Force for High-Quality Development
Shenzhen has firmly seized opportunities, focused on solving practical problems encountered in high-quality development, adhered to the organic combination of top-level design and grassroots exploration, and launched a number of innovative and leading reform measures. It has accelerated the development of new quality productive forces through reform, fully activating the driving force for high-quality development.
The city has continuously deepened the reform of the market-oriented allocation of factors. It has promoted mixed land use for secondary and tertiary industries to improve the efficiency of land factor allocation; established a technology achievement and intellectual property trading center, innovated the intellectual property securitization model, and accelerated the transformation of technological factors into new quality productive forces; the Shenzhen Stock Exchange has fully implemented the registration-based reform, and the main board of the Shenzhen market has resumed its IPO function after 21 years, with its trading volume ranking first in Asia and third in the world in 2024.
As the city with the highest density of the global low-altitude industry, Shenzhen is racing at full speed to become the world’s “first city of low-altitude economy“. In 2024, Shenzhen took the lead in achieving a breakthrough in top-level legislation, issuing China’s first legislation on low-altitude economy—the Regulations of the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone on the Promotion of the Low-Altitude Economy Industry—and building a policy system of “regulations + action plan + supporting measures”.
Striving to build a highland for the full-chain low-altitude industry, a large number of low-altitude enterprises represented by DJI, Meituan, and KWT have rooted in Shenzhen. Yan Yan, head of public affairs at Meituan UAV, said: “Meituan has set up its low-altitude business headquarters in Shenzhen based on the city’s favorable technological and industrial environment.”
In fields such as new energy vehicles, artificial intelligence, and robots, Shenzhen has also formed a closed loop of policy support, industrial agglomeration, and application scenario implementation. At a recent docking conference, an Zibian robot skillfully folded clothes. Its vice president Zhang Luncheng introduced: “This robot has recently entered Bao’an Nursing Home for scenario training. In the future, it can replace nursing staff to complete tasks such as clothes drying and folding, and is expected to be promoted on a large scale when mature.”
From “Robot Valley” to “Robot Bay”, relying on a complete chain from core components to scenario implementation, Shenzhen has established significant advantages in the robot track. According to statistics, Shenzhen currently has more than 74,000 robot-related enterprises and 34 listed companies, leading the country in both numbers; seven Shenzhen-based enterprises were selected into Morgan Stanley’s top 100 global humanoid robot listed companies.
Openness Empowerment: Building a New Pattern of Win-Win Development
The more open a region is, the more it can activate development momentum; the more developed it is, the more confidence it has to expand opening-up. With a high degree of openness, strong economic vitality, a thick innovation atmosphere, and an excellent development environment, Shenzhen has become an important strategic fulcrum for foreign capital to deepen its presence in China and connect with the world. Since the beginning of this year, 104 countries and regions around the world have invested in Shenzhen, and internationally renowned enterprises such as Siemens Healthineers, Dassault, and JCDecaux have launched new investment projects in the city.
Industrial upgrading has injected strong impetus into Shenzhen’s foreign trade. BYD’s 14 millionth new energy vehicle rolled off the production line in Brazil, entering a new phase of global development; Comix Group’s V’mo fingerprint lock bag won the 2025 German iF Design Award, achieving the leap from “products going global” to “brands taking root” in multiple global markets; XDS’s carbon fiber frame technology and intelligent cycling system have both entered the world’s leading ranks, gaining a firm foothold in the international high-end bicycle market.
The “gravity field” effect of foreign capital continues to stand out. Since the 14th Five-Year Plan period, by July 2025, the city has cumulatively established 34,600 new foreign-invested enterprises, accounting for about 14.7% of the national total, with the increment ranking first in the country for three consecutive years; the actually utilized foreign capital reached about 274.23 billion yuan, 1.2 times that of the same period in the 13th Five-Year Plan.
At present, 180 countries and regions around the world have invested in Shenzhen, with more than 340 Fortune 500 companies having invested in the city; the city has over 200 active foreign-funded R&D centers with more than 30,000 R&D personnel.
Behind the accelerated influx of foreign capital into Shenzhen is the city’s continuous efforts to create a sound foreign investment environment, introducing a series of policies to expand the fields of open cooperation, promulgating and implementing the Regulations of the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone on Foreign Investment, and continuously improving the service system for promoting foreign investment. It is striving to build a “preferred destination for global investment”, enabling foreign-funded enterprises to enter, stay, develop well and grow fast.
Shenzhen has always taken it as an important mission to be an important window for showcasing China’s reform and opening-up achievements and for the international community to observe China’s reform and opening-up. It has built broader platforms for foreign exchanges and cooperation, expanded the network of international friendship city relations, and continuously enlarged its international “Peng Friends Circle”. Today, Shenzhen has established 95 pairs of sister cities or friendly exchange cities with provinces and cities in 59 countries around the world. Taking friendship cities as the link, Shenzhen has carried out in-depth cooperation with various cities in many fields such as port construction, ecological protection, education and medical care, and high and new technologies. The friendship city map has been organically integrated with the economic and trade map, and the international “Peng Friends Circle” has been continuously expanded and optimized.
