Tianjin's municipal government has unveiled an ambitious plan to raise as much as 500 billion yuan from banks and the private sector to stimulate economic growth and promote innovation.
The Tianjin Haihe Industry Fund, a government guidance fund, will invest in and provide financing for companies in 10 pillar industries including high-end equipment manufacturing, information technology, aerospace, petrochemicals, environmental protection, new energy, energy-saving and new energy vehicles, new materials, biomedicine, and internet.
Support will also be provided to seven emerging industries - marine engineering equipment, ultra-high-voltage power transmission, high-end computer numerical control (CNC) machine tools, robotics, integrated circuits, high-performance servers, and data center and Big Data, the local government said at the launch of the fund on April 8.
The municipal government has seeded the fund with 20 billion yuan of its own money and has been promised a total of 100 billion yuan over the next five years from financial institutions comprising Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Ltd, China Construction Bank Corp., Bank of China, Bank of Beijing, CITIC Group Corp Ltd., China Insurance Investment Fund, and China Minsheng Investment Corp Ltd.
The municipality, like all local governments, is pouring money into supporting the central government's Made in China 2025 initiative to upgrade manufacturing and promote innovation. Tianjin has also been designated as a national research and development base for advanced manufacturing under the strategy to integrate Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei province, a project known as Jing-Jin-Ji that was launched in 2015.