The construction list for the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei International Science and Innovation Center is released. What challenges will the three regions face?

“On the morning, I discussed a major project in Yizhuang, focusing on cooperation in robot industry-university-research-industry application and talent cultivation.” Zhao Hui, deputy general manager of Tangshan Baichuan Intelligent Company, told a reporter from 21st Century Business Herald.

On the morning of March 27, Zhao Hui took the earliest high-speed train from Tangshan, Hebei, to Beijing. In the morning, he discussed cooperation in Yizhuang (Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area). In the afternoon, he rushed to Haidian to attend the parallel forum of the Zhongguancun Forum Annual Conference, the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Coordinated Innovation and High-Quality Development Forum.

At the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Coordinated Innovation and High-Quality Development Forum, the “Implementation Measures for the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Three Places to Advance the Construction of the Beijing (Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei) International Scientific and Technological Innovation Center” were released, clarifying the institutional mechanisms, key tasks, and division of responsibilities among the three places for jointly building an international scientific and technological innovation center. A series of achievements, including major demonstration projects for coordinated innovation and industrial collaboration in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, the list of joint entities for coordinated innovation in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, cooperation results of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Natural Science Foundation, the list of Beijing’s concept verification platforms, the list of scientific and technological innovation service institutions of Tianjin’s Tiankai Higher Education and Tech Innovation Park, and the list of pilot testing scenario resources in Hebei Province, were also successively released at the forum.

Scene at the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Coordinated Innovation and High-Quality Development Forum. Photo by Zhou Hui, reporter

From blueprint to practice: clear division of work among the three places

The Central Economic Work Conference at the end of 2025 explicitly stated that the scope of the construction of the Beijing International Scientific and Technological Innovation Center will be expanded to the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region.

“Compared with the Yangtze River Delta, Beijing’s innovation system has very strong pillars, relatively fragile crossbeams—some places are extremely robust, while others are extremely weak. This expansion has profound significance.” Wang Maoxiang, director of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei National Technology Innovation Center, said at the forum.

In his view, at present, the development of industries increasingly needs common support from several industries; the boundaries between industries are disappearing. At the same time, the pace of technological development is very fast—there is no boundary between science and technology, and no boundary between disciplines. Competitive innovation is no longer competition among a single main body, organization, region, or country; in essence, it has evolved into competition between innovation systems. The development of an industrial chain also depends on cost and efficiency, and only by appropriately dispersing the industrial chain can it be better strengthened and scaled up.

“An industrial chain generally needs to be distributed reasonably by combining production factors and the market. Relying on a single region—no matter how strong it is—it is very difficult to build an innovation system.” Wang Maoxiang said. The expansion of the Beijing International Scientific and Technological Innovation Center into the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei International Scientific and Technological Innovation Center will strongly support coordinated development across the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, and it will also use the overall advantages of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region to improve Beijing’s innovation system.

How can the three places’ innovation and technology collaboration be further implemented? The “Implementation Measures for the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Three Places to Advance the Construction of the Beijing (Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei) International Scientific and Technological Innovation Center” released at the above-mentioned forum makes it clear that, in terms of institutional mechanisms, it will give full play to the advantages of a joint central-government-and-ministry/provincial-and-municipal co-construction mechanism led jointly by the Central Office of Science and Technology and Beijing. Both Tianjin and Hebei will fully participate, forming a work coordination mechanism for advancing the construction of the Beijing (Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei) science and technology innovation center, and under the overall coordination of the Central Office of Science and Technology, Beijing will take the lead in drafting the annual key work plan and the policy and task lists.

In terms of key tasks, the three places will make precise efforts, each with its own deployment: Beijing will study and form a 2026 key tasks work plan, planning to deploy 232 key projects and tasks; Tianjin will draft and implement implementation opinions, planning to form a list of 108 work tasks; and Hebei will formulate an action plan, planning to form a division-of-work ledger of 54 items and a list of 107 annual key task items. Xiong’an New Area and Shijiazhuang will respectively formulate implementation plans for important strategic nodes. In the division of responsibilities, an “overall coordination by the central government, coordinated action by ministries, and linkage among the three places” system will be established, strengthening docking with national ministries such as the Ministry of Science and Technology, clarifying the main responsibilities of the three places, and ensuring that all measures are implemented effectively.

The forum also released a batch of major demonstration projects for coordinated innovation and industrial collaboration in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei. These include projects with investment on the scale of hundreds of billions. Taking the robot research and development innovation center and the pilot testing base project as examples: Yanyling Jiaye invested 450 million yuan, and the project was landed in the Beijing Urban Sub-Center Canal Business District, building a one-stop pilot testing platform integrating robotics and digital intelligent equipment automation for the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region and covering the North China region.

The three places in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei also each released a series of lists. For example, for Hebei: in actively co-building the Beijing (Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei) International Scientific and Technological Innovation Center, Hebei is actively building a preferred location for pilot testing of Beijing’s scientific and technological achievements, opening up scenario verification and pilot testing service resources in an all-round way, and systematically sorting, integrating, and forming a list of 50 pilot testing scenario resources in Hebei Province.

Among them, 35 scenario resources can cover eight key industries, such as modern steel, green chemicals, biopharmaceuticals, electronic information, new energy and intelligent connected vehicles, robotics, space-earth information and satellite internet, and the digital industry, among others.

How to advance industrial collaborative innovation in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei

At the beginning of 2014, “the coordinated development of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei” was elevated to a national strategy. Today, the three places have already made clear progress in areas such as transportation. In the future, how can industrial innovation and coordination among Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei be done better?

When Zhao Hui was interviewed by a reporter from 21st Century Business Herald, he said that currently their “shared factory” has already cooperated with dozens of robotics companies in Beijing, and also with some Beijing research institutes and academies.

Zhao Hui does not deny that the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta regions have greater advantages in robot and other high-end manufacturing industry clusters. But Hebei also has advantages such as being geographically close to Beijing. At the same time, Hebei has abundant application scenarios and a solid industrial foundation, forming a robotics industry cluster centered on Tangshan. Baichuan Intelligent uses a “leading enterprise + resource sharing” model to build a shared service platform focused on the design, R&D, and manufacturing of non-standard robot products.

“We take all those non-standard orders with very low average unit prices.” Zhao Hui said that currently the “shared factory” model has not yet accounted for the economic books; what they value more is more policy opportunities based on the construction of the Beijing (Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei) International Scientific and Technological Innovation Center, and generating more links with Beijing’s innovation and technology R&D resources.

Tianwei Tan, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and president of Beijing University of Chemical Technology, offered suggestions for the practice of building the Beijing (Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei) International Scientific and Technological Innovation Center, based on the collaboration and coordinated layout among the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region in the biomanufacturing industry.

Beijing’s goal is to build a national innovation source for synthetic biology manufacturing and a leading industrial area. Tianjin also has an R&D foundation when building pilot testing platforms. Hebei also has industrial foundations—for example, Shijiazhuang’s biopharmaceutical industrial park, forming a certain degree of industrial clustering.

“Right now, we are preparing to set up an alliance for biomanufacturing in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei. We also hope to leverage some innovation centers to connect everyone. That way, each side’s division of labor is clear, and we can jointly promote the construction of the international scientific and technological innovation center.” Tan Tianwei said.

Regarding how to avoid homogeneous competition among industries in the three places, when Tan Tianwei was interviewed by a reporter from 21st Century Business Herald, he said that Beijing highlights original innovation and solves the problem from 0 to 1. For the steps from 1 to 10—for example, the pilot testing stage in the industry—Tianjin and Hebei can handle it. For the steps from 10 to N, Hebei and Tianjin can do it, and Beijing can also do the part where “the volume is not particularly large, but the added value is particularly high.” He also suggested that beyond having division of work, the three places must also have a good mechanism for sharing interests; based on the premise of sharing interests, it is possible for the three places to do well in industrial collaboration.

From the perspective of regional industrial collaboration experience in the Yangtze River Delta, Feng Yecheng, a member of the party committee and vice president of the Zhejiang Tsinghua Yangtze River Delta Research Institute, also discussed suggestions for innovation collaboration in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei. He said that the essence of regional coordination is the free flow of innovation factors. Regional coordinated development requires strengthening the co-building of platforms for industry-university-research cooperation. It is necessary to establish cross-regional mechanisms for talent exchange, resource interconnection, and benefit sharing, so that factors such as talent, capital, technology, and data can be allocated efficiently. In addition, it is necessary to use enterprises’ real needs as the driving force, connect the innovation chain, guide scientific research forces to precisely match pain points on the front line of the industry, and truly achieve deep integration between the innovation chain and the industrial chain.