【China Daily】Updated: 2014-09-12
Having exhausted its cheap labor and resources, which boosted the city's double-digit growth for nearly 30 years, Wuxi faced pressing needs of innovating its industrial technologies.
Wuxi has turned to "foreign brains". The government vowed to invite at least 30 leading engineers to help its industries by 2012, and meted out one of the most generous assistance programs in China to help innovative people industrialize their ideas after 2008.
Yet when the government's support goes to extremes, its support becomes interference that distorts market relations. Emerging industries soon face overcapacity.
Wuxi Suntech Power Holdings, once one of the largest photovoltaic enterprises in China, rose to prominence and then went bankrupt within several years thanks to the government's preferential policies.
"We learned our lesson and now place more emphasis on the sustainable 'industrialization' of their ideas rather than their education background and titles," said Xu Chongyuan, deputy director of the city's science and technology bureau.
"The research institutes set up by universities in Wuxi make a bigger contribution to local industries than the individual programs supported by the government."
The Wuxi government started cooperating in 2011 with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, making Wuxi the first city partner of MIT in China, as Wuxi made an effort to boost industrialization.
Chinese universities with strong experience in machinery, new materials and telecommunication are also potential partners in the eyes of Xu and her colleagues.
Since 2011, the Wuxi government has persuaded Harbin Institute of Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Tsinghua University, Northeast University of China, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics and the Chinese Academy of Sciences to set up research institutes in Huishan district, an industrial area of the city.
The city government constructs new buildings and provides three-year research funds for professors and their students coming to Huishan.
In return, the research institutes are expected to help local enterprises, attract new investment or set up their own high-tech enterprises in Huishan.
"What attracts me is Wuxi's industrial base, local officials' commitment to pursue innovation-driven growth and their generous assistance," said Ding 
Han, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and dean of the Mechanical Science and Engineering School of the Wuhan-based HUST, who set up a mechanical engineering institute in Huishan with about 20 researchers, teachers and 100 postgraduate students in 2012.
"I am happy that our research fruits in digitization and automation can help so many enterprises in the city. They also provide our students ideal opportunities to put their knowledge into practice."
Next year, the annual economic output of Ding's institute in Huishan will outweigh the government's assistance in the third year after its arrival.
"The government does a job as a matchmaker in establishing such a platform for the 'marriage' between research and industries," said a business owner whose propeller-polishing workshops benefit from the technicians of Ding's institute.
"The universities are more willing to partner with big enterprises such as Huawei. But after the government put the small and medium-sized enterprises' demand for new techniques together, the professors and researchers will find more opportunities in a bigger market."
Some researchers at universities in less developed regions are also keen to come to Wuxi for its funding and efficient government.
"I am happy that the Wuxi government can create a good material environment for my faculty," said Bai Yongping, deputy director of HIT's new material research institute in Wuxi. He suggested in an interview that he has much more research fund and autonomy in Wuxi than in the Harbin-based institute in Heilongjiang province.
Many local governments are keen to partner with universities. But some research branch institutes only exist in name.
Wuxi's strong industries and pragmatic government lay a solid foundation for close and productive connections between research and industries.
(China Daily 09/12/2014 page9)