Scaling the heights of industrial innovation

Cities in the Greater Bay Area are spearheading nation's industrial revolution as Guangdong province rebounds from the pandemic's battering. Zhou Mo reports from Shenzhen.

Acoustical engineers at the research and development center of Shenzhen-based television-maker Skyworth Group were on the cusp of a breakthrough in industrial revolution — testing a new type of acoustics technology that enables glass to vibrate and produce sound, and seeing how it could be integrated with television manufacturing.

"It's an entirely new field. We've had no experience to take a leaf from," said Wang Hai, vice-president of Shenzhen Skyworth-RGB Electronics, a Skyworth subsidiary that produces and distributes consumer electronic products.

After eight months of grueling research, the group's R&D team made the grade, applying the technology to their latest 8K ultra-high definition OLED TV model. It was a feat that made Skyworth the world's second electronics group, after South Korean tech giant LG Electronics, to start such mass production.

"We're committed to technological advancement and product improvement, no matter how high the cost is," Wang said.

Skyworth's master stroke highlights the significance of enterprises in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area in using innovation to attain long-term development goals against a rapidly changing domestic and global business environment. It also explains how the nation's southern region has held up its role in pushing the nation's economic growth.

According to official data, Guangdong province was home to some 53,000 nationally ranked high-tech companies by the end of last year — nearly 20,000 more than the number in 2019. More than 50,000 of them were located in the nine Chinese mainland cities of the Greater Bay Area — Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Foshan, Huizhou, Dongguan, Zhongshan, Jiangmen and Zhaoqing.