Technicians check facilities at a factory in Xiamen. [Photo by Zhang Qihui/For China Daily]

Emerging industrial clusters

By 2020, online retail sales in Xiamen reached 48.33 billion yuan ($7.58 billion), an increase of 22.5 percent over the previous year. The volume of express delivery services recorded 5.43 billion pieces, an increase of 27.8 percent.

The added value of high-tech industries and strategic emerging industries above designated size accounted for 39.8 percent and 33.9 percent of the regulated industries respectively. Investment in high-tech industries increased by 19.4 percent, 10.6 percentage points higher than the city's fixed investment growth. Among them, pharmaceutical production was relatively fast, with a growth rate of 43.4 percent.

There are 777 biomedical and health companies in Xiamen, and 45 percent of them are located in Haicang district.

Li Shicheng, chairman of Xiamen Innovax Biotech, said: "Our company and Haicang have been developing together for more than 10 years. This is what Haicang has been doing all the time, and it is the financial strength of Haicang," Li said.

In 2000, lead researcher Xia Ningshao's innovation team at Xiamen University began to cooperate with Xiamen Innovax Biotech with the support of the city's science and technology bureau. The team successfully developed the world's first hepatitis E vaccine and the first domestically produced and world's third divalent cervix.

The domestic bivalent cervical cancer vaccine was launched in May 2020 and passed the World Health Organization PQ certification in October 2021.

According to Li, the first domestically developed second-generation cervical cancer vaccine (nine-valent) has entered Phase III clinical trials and is expected to be on the market in 2024 or 2025.

Xiamen Yealink has been working in the field of intellectual property communications for 20 years and become a high-tech enterprise in Xiamen. In the past two decades, Yealink has started from a small unit of more than 100 square meters to the self-built Yealink research and development building of more than 10,000 sq m. The company has developed from a single terminal product line to a complete set of corporate communications solutions. Yealink has grown and developed together with the Xiamen Special Economic Zone.

Xu Wenjin contributed to this story.