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A report on the development of gazelle enterprises in the national high-tech zone was published on October 15 by the Torch High Technology Industry Development Center, Ministry of Science and Technology, and GEI GreatWall Strategy Consultants.
A "gazelle enterprise" refers to an enterprise that has overcome a depressing hard time and entered a fast growing period. These enterprises have features such as fast growth, strong creative ability and great potential.
The "gazelles" achieve their high speed development through promoting new products, offering creative services, adopting innovative techniques, opening vanity markets and building special business models. Many countries set the development of gazelle companies as the benchmark of regional development of innovation and entrepreneurship.
For example, the Silicon Valley Index has listed the gazelle rate as an important indicator of economic performance in Silicon Valley for years.
China is now strongly promoting an innovation driven strategy. Gazelle enterprises will both result from and be a significant indication of the innovation and entrepreneurship campaign in the country. As a typical representative of new economics, the development of gazelles will help change the economic development mode and better the implementation of China's innovation driven strategy.
The report shows that although the economy has slowed in the past few months, the number of gazelle enterprises in the National High-tech Zone is still growing, which is a highlight of Chinese economic development.
According to the report, the income of "gazelles" in the past three years (from 2012 to 2015) has increased by 35.8 percent. Their average business income in 2015 was 906 million yuan ($134.57 million), with 66.84 million yuan's net profit.
Also, the "gazelles" shows great innovation. Their capital intensity of inner-enterprise research and development expenditure in 2015 reached 2.7 percent and the value of new products accounted for 40 percent of total output value.
The compound growth rates of high-tech products and output technical services in the past three years were 42.2 percent and 48.4 percent respectively. The growth rates of patent applications and registered trademarks were 25.7 percent and 43.6 percent from 2012 to 2015.
The high-tech zones themselves have positive influences on the growth of gazelle enterprises. About 14 percent of such companies settle in or graduate from incubation and accelerator high-tech zones.
The venture investment environment for gazelles keeps improving. Almost all of them received investment over the 2014-2015 period.
By the end of 2015, 259 gazelle enterprises had gone public in China, 112 of them that year. In addition, nine places including Zhongguancun in Beijing, the East Lake high-tech zone in Wuhan, Hubei province, the high-tech zone in Guangzhou, Guangdong province and the high-tech zone in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, have put forward plans to support the development of gazelles.
So far, there are 2,085 gazelle enterprises in 127 national high-tech zones in the country including 535, or 25 percent of the total, in the Zhongguancun Science Park, ranking Zhongguancun at the top.
The gazelle enterprise development report indicates that the gazelle enterprises are playing a more and more significant role in the transformation of national high-tech zones in China. Meanwhile, high-tech zones are improving the environment to better support the growth of gazelles. As China develops an innovation and entrepreneurship chain to cultivate gazelles we can expect these two factors to lead to new achievements in the future.
