An employee at Nokia’s mobile phone factory in Yizhuang. The Beijing Economic and Technological Development Area has more than 4,500 companies including big names such as Nokia, Bayer Healthcare, GE and Benz. Provided to China Daily

Last year, the panel started the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Base for Overseas Talents program, specifically to identify and hire talent.

The efforts seem to have paid off, considering that there are more than 200,000 employees at the BDA now from various nations with more than 50 percent of them holding university degrees.

"We set up a special fund of 10 million yuan to encourage talent, promote scientific, technological innovation and also fund start-ups," Zhang says.

"The BDA will be an internationalized industrial city in the future and will not only be a center for advanced manufacturing, but also a truly world-class living environment for all," he says.

One of the big advantages of the clusters that exist at the BDA is that it helps the companies become much more confident with their expansion and supply targets.

"The BDA is different from other information & communication technology zones that exist in Taiwan, Japan and US as they focus only on certain products' innovation and design. The BDA is more like a whole industrial community which embraces all kinds of production in a more interactive manner," says Zhao Haijun, vice-president of semiconductor manufacturer SMIC.

Zhao, who studies and worked in Taiwan and Singapore for more than 10 years, before coming to SMIC, says the largest and most advanced foundry in the Chinese mainland, in the BDA, provides integrated circuit foundry and other technology services for the company.

What amazed Zhao most in the BDA is that the SMIC factory is situated very close to mobile phone giant Nokia. "Chips from SMIC can be sent directly to Nokia for use in their cellphones. At the same time there are some companies in the BDA that use chips to make auto components for Mercedes-Benz."

Zhao believes the company has a potential to deliver a larger share of its production to its neighbors in the BDA.

"If the local government continues to push for strategic cooperation among different industries and companies, the BDA will soon become an industrial hot spot that can compare with Hsinchu Science and Industrial Park in Taiwan, the Tsukuba Science City in Japan and the Silicon Valley in US," he says.

zhaoyanrong@chinadaily.com.cn