Tianjin has come up with policies that encourage small-to-mid-sized scientific and technological enterprises to innovate and has seen the number of such enterprises go from 35,000 in 2012, to 73,200 this year, and the number of “little giant” enterprises with sales above 100-million yuan ($15.2 million) going from 1,800 to 3,453 this year, and an output value that accounts for 48 percent of the city’s total industries.

The year is the first year of the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20) and Tianjin’s plans call for more than 100,000 small-to-mid-sized enterprises in science and technology, and 5,000 “little giant” enterprises, by 2020. Last year, it provided 6 billion yuan to cover capital losses of enterprises with transformation loans, and financing of SMEs grew 31 percent year on year, with loans to small–to-micro enterprises up more than 45 percent.

Tianjin has also set aside 500 million yuan for industrial mergers and acquisitions, to make the best use of domestic and overseas technology, talent, brands and market share and it wants to merge 100 overseas and 100 domestic enterprises by 2020. The city also has 106 maker-spaces to support SMEs in science and technology and expects to use 500 million yuan in government funds to build 200 maker-spaces by next year.

The city’s Special Entrepreneurial Innovation Zone has 2,300 new enterprises, including Tencent, Oracle, CITIC Guoan, the CSM Group, Harvest Fund and IDG Capital Partners, after only half a year of operation and it plans to bring in 100 leading enterprises, 1,000 enterprises with taxes of more than 10 million yuan, and more than 50,000 talented entrepreneurs by 2020. The rise in mergers in new energy, bio-medicines, energy conservation and environmental protection, and top equipment manufacturers, have helped Tianjin have an annual growth in GDP of 12.3 percent, at a time when the petroleum, chemical, steel, cement, and other traditional industries have seen their capacity decrease significantly.