BEIJING: With the steady improvement in China’s overall strength in sci-tech innovation, numerous unicorn enterprises have been fostered in the country in recent years, providing continuous momentum for nurturing new quality productive forces.

China boasts 369 unicorn companies, startups valued at more than US$1bil, according to a report on China’s unicorn enterprise development, which was released at the just concluded 2024 Zhongguancun Forum (ZGC Forum) in Beijing.

The number of unicorn companies in China amounts to over a quarter of the total number of such companies globally. The country has added 67 new unicorn companies over the past year, the report said.

“It shows the vitality of China’s economic development. But the number of unicorn firms in the country is far from reaching its potential,” said Li Daokui, an economist at Tsinghua University, at the ZGC Forum.

“The three core competencies most critical to the development of Chinese unicorn enterprises are innovation, high quality delivery, and the ability to make continuous innovation,” said Lai Lipeng, co-founder of XtalPi, a Chinese unicorn company specialising in artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics.

Carbios is a French unicorn company focused on the development and industrialisation of biological technologies to reinvent the life cycle of plastics and textiles.

At the forum, Emmanuel Ladent, the company’s chief executive officer (CEO), said: “Innovation and disruptive innovation like Carbios’ are always welcome in a market like China.

“China is pushing a lot for clean and green technologies and biotech.

“It has a huge industry in plastics and textiles, so there is a huge opportunity for us to develop a partnership in China and make sure we will be successful,” Ladent said.

In terms of localities, the 369 unicorn companies in China span 47 cities nationwide, and more than 60% of them are concentrated in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong province’s Shenzhen and Guangzhou, and Hangzhou in Zhejiang province.

Beijing ranks first nationwide with 114 such firms, the report noted.

The capital has cultivated more than 40 listed unicorn enterprises, such as Xiaomi, JD.com and Meituan, with a total market value of about three trillion yuan, according to Zhang Yulei, deputy director of the Beijing Municipal Science and Technology Commission.

In the fields of autonomous driving, new energy storage and robotics, companies such as Mech-Mind, a Chinese unicorn firm focusing on industrial 3D cameras and AI-powered software for intelligent robotics, have actively carried out research and development layout and business expansion around the world, Zhang said.

“I’m especially grateful for the fertile land of Beijing. If not for Beijing, Xiaomi could not have achieved such results and could not have been born,” Lei Jun, founder and CEO of Xiaomi, said at the opening ceremony of the forum. — Xinhua