Office buildings of the East Lake High-tech Development Zone. [Photo/WeChat account of Optics Valley of China]

Wuhan in Central China's Hubei province has released its three-year action plan to cultivate more unicorn companies. The plan will be implemented on Dec 1 in a bid to facilitate original, groundbreaking innovations and breakthroughs.

The East Lake High-tech Development Zone (also known as Optics Valley of China, or OVC) is expected to cultivate 8-10 unicorn enterprises and the Wuhan Economic & Technological Development Zone (WEDZ) is expected to cultivate more than five such enterprises, focusing mainly on IC, optoelectronics, new energy and intelligent connected vehicles, biomedicine, artificial intelligence, software, and quantum science and technology, and completing sci-tech financial service systems.

By 2025, Wuhan is expected to be home to over 20 unicorn companies and over 30 potential unicorn enterprises.

The city will establish libraries for unicorns and potential unicorns and set up a municipal unicorn alliance to hold related competitions and summits, attracting more such enterprises from outside Wuhan.

Unicorn companies are encouraged to jointly found industry-education-research consortiums with universities and research institutes. They will also be subsidized for their technical contracts and major national, provincial or municipal innovation projects.

Special funds targeting the cultivation of unicorn companies will be set up, and financial institutions are encouraged to create favorable policies for unicorns and greenlight their listing procedures. Unicorns that list successfully will receive awards ranging from 1 to 3 million yuan ($417,900) in a phased manner, with the top collective rewards for one such listed unicorn standing at 8 million yuan.

Please refer to the official website of the Wuhan government to see the full version of the action plan.