Delegates get down to business at the 2022 National Specialized and New Small and Medium-Sized Enterprise (SME) Development Conference. [Photo/WeChat account of Optics Valley of China]

The 2022 National Specialized and New Small and Medium-Sized Enterprise (SME) Development Conference was held in Nanjing city, capital of East China's Jiangsu province, on Sept 8.

A total of 303 enterprises from Central China's Hubei province were selected among the fourth group of national specialized and new little giant companies, ranking it sixth in the nation and first in Central China.

Among them, 70 enterprises are based in the East Lake High-tech Development Zone (also known as Optics Valley of China, or OVC), accounting for 23 percent and 44 percent of Hubei's and its capital Wuhan's respective totals.

The 70 OVC-based corporations boast average sales revenue growth of 43.11 over the past two years and have spent nearly 10 percent of their total investments in product R&D. They come from areas including optoelectronics information, equipment manufacturing and biomedicines, with the majority of them being optoelectronics information business operators.

In addition, OVC has ranked fourth in the world's top-class scientific and technological park assessments, only behind Zhongguancun, the Zhangjiang High-Tech Park and the Shenzhen High-tech Industrial Development Zone.

To date, the valley boasts 17 national major little giant companies, 95 national specialized and new little giant firms, 318 provincial specialized and new SMEs and 438 municipal specialized and new enterprises.