Pudong: Global Enterprises Co-shape New Industrial Landscape

By Yang Yulai ,  SFC, 21st Century Business Herald

Thirty-five years have transformed the former rustic fields of rice paddies into a grand symphony of a modern urban district. On this fertile ground of progress, the Gross Domestic Product N figure bears witness to a metamorphosis of staggering proportions: from 6 billion yuan in 1990 to approximately 1.8 trillion yuan in 2024, Pudong has soared at a meteoric pace.

Why Pudong is so sucessful?

Representatives from Pudong shared stories of their close connection and mutual success with Pudong's development on the promotion session of the "Parallel Session on Pudong and the World: forging a path to openness, shaping a new industrial landscape." 

Yu Feng (William), President of Honeywell Greater China, recalled that he came to Pudong in the 1990s to serve as general manager of a foreign enterprise. Thanks to Pudong's reform and opening up policies and outstanding business environment, the business he led grew 16 times in three years. 

From establishing China Investment Co., Ltd. in Shanghai in the 1990s to setting up its China R&D Center in Pudong in 2024, Honeywell has continuously increased its investment in Pudong. 

"Benefiting from Pudong's abundant talent pool, excellent policy environment and highly international business atmosphere, Honeywell China has become one of the world's most important strategic markets, R&D centers and technology innovation & manufacturing bases," Yu Feng stated.

In recent years, under the guidance of the "dual carbon" goals, Honeywell and many enterprises in Pudong have actively explored the construction of intelligent, green and low-carbon buildings, which have then been promoted across the country. Currently, centered in Shanghai, it provides fire protection systems for more than 250 rail transit lines in over 30 cities nationwide, efficient operation systems for more than 500 large manufacturing enterprises, comfortable low-carbon solutions for over 2,400 high-grade hotels, and various product and service systems for more than 24,000 commercial buildings.

Foreign enterprises represented by Honeywell are also empowering Chinese enterprises to "go global". According to Yu Feng, leveraging the ties between Honeywell China's headquarters and overseas companies, as well as China's complete and solid supply chain and overseas work experience, the company actively supports Chinese enterprises in expanding overseas, focusing on smart cities, intelligent buildings and digital factories, which have entered countries in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, Southeast Asia and Europe.

Innovation Incubation 

Shanghai is China's first internationally designated science and technology innovation center, and Pudong undertakes half of the national innovation tasks. 

Currently, in the field of embodied intelligence, Pudong has become a highland for industrial innovation and an ecological agglomeration area of embodied intelligence in China. It has not only spawned "national team" institutions such as the national and local joint construction humanoid robot innovation center, but also nurtured a number of industry leaders that have achieved mass production and technological breakthroughs, such as Agibot and Fourier Intelligence. 

Gu Jie, Founder and CEO of Fourier Intelligence, recalled that in 2015, he got his first office in an incubator in Zhangjiang and recruited his first employee. At that time, Pudong's incubation platform introduced Zhangjiang Science and Technology Investment Corporation to complete the angel round financing, helping the enterprise take the first step from zero to one. Currently, Pudong has formed hundreds of incubators that provide investment-incubation integration and space empowerment, laying the foundation for many start-ups to take their first successful step.

"Fourier's development is inseparable from 'capital, policies and talents'," Gu Jie pointed out. As patient capital, Zhangjiang Science and Technology Investment Corporation has accompanied Fourier through every stage of its development; Pudong New Area's export policies have helped the company's rehabilitation robots be exported to more than 40 countries and regions; Pudong's Pearl Program and settlement advantages have also attracted a large number of innovative talents, who have become the source of motivation for enterprise innovation.

For technology to evolve from "isolated models" to "widespread practice", scenario verification is indispensable. For AI enterprises, Pudong has provided a large number of open and innovative scenarios that can accelerate product iteration and R&D implementation. Taking Fourier as an example, its robots have entered hundreds of community hospitals and Grade A tertiary hospitals, and its humanoid robots have also entered China Construction Bank branches and Century Park in Pudong to provide services to the public. 

At present, centering on Zhangjiang Robot Valley and Model Community, Pudong has formed ecological advantages of close integration of upstream and downstream industries such as embodied intelligence, integrated circuits and intelligent manufacturing. Gu Jie said that Fourier, with Pudong New Area's Open Innovation Center for Large Enterprises as the core and relying on Pudong's robot industry ecosystem, creates interactive and human-centered robot products and continuously implements them in real scenarios.