Beijing recently unveiled 27 measures to support the development of high-performing "little giant" firms in the city.
The measures focus on enhancing technological innovation capabilities and promoting digital and green development of such firms as well as providing financial aid for them.
"Little giant" firms are the top performers among specialized, high-end, and innovation-driven small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that provide distinctive products or services. These SMEs are distinguished by their focus on niche markets, strong innovation capabilities, large market share, and strengths in core technologies, which enable them to have outstanding achievements.
As of September, Beijing had cultivated 12,750 innovation-driven SMEs, 8,754 municipal-level specialized, high-end and innovation-driven SMEs and 1,035 national-level "little giant" SMEs. This batch of measures cover all these levels of SMEs in Beijing.
The foremost priority of the measures is to enhance technological innovation capabilities of the SMEs. Beijing encourages these enterprises to participate in the research and development of key common technologies in the industry and in scientific research projects funded by government financial resources. It also encourages enterprise technology centers, manufacturing innovation centers, and common technology platforms to open up their equipment and resources to the SMEs.
The measures encourage universities and research institutes to grant specialized, high-end, and innovation-driven enterprises the right to use scientific and technological achievements and to transfer patent technologies.
As capital is pivotal to the growth of SMEs, the measures provide support in cutting taxes and fees, improving credit services, and expanding direct financing channels for the enterprises.
Additionally, Beijing will precisely match land resource factors and help meet the land demand from new investment projects of the enterprises.
In regard to data resources in the digital economy, Beijing will promote data supply to those SMEs. By leveraging the city's big data platform and other infrastructure, Beijing will offer data products and services through methods such as opening public data and authorizing operations to meet the enterprise needs for public data usage.