The Sino-German SMEs Cooperation Zone, located in the Jinan Innovation Zone, has an overall planned area of 26 square kilometers. 

It is the fifth area designated for Sino-German small and medium-size enterprise (SME) cooperation approved by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, as well as the first of its kind in north China. 

Planned and designed by Beijing Great-wall Enterprise Institute, leading global real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield and German design and consulting company SBA, the zone highlights German features. 

It focuses on the three strategic emerging industries of electronic information manufacturing, autos, new energy vehicles and rail transit equipment, and aeronautics and astronautics. It also strives to foster knowledge-intensive services and life-related service industries such as industrial design, education and training, technology finance and intellectual property, and to develop a "double center mode" that includes an R&D center and a manufacturing center.

The zone aims to become a Sino-German industrial park blending Jinan features with German standards and quality, a world-class intelligent manufacturing area, and a model for international SME cooperation.

People with expertise in high-end manufacturing are the group most urgently needed in the manufacturing industry. Thus the cooperation zone is working on a training platform to offer it just those talent resources.

The Siemens Industry 4.0 innovation center, Jinan Vocational College, Shandong Yingcai University and Festo are jointly building a Sino-EU training base for manufacturing professionals to cultivate technicians for European companies and attract more high-end and leading enterprises.

Meanwhile, a transfer center for German technologies will be constructed to select quality overseas sci-tech projects, help them match with industrial guidance funding, promote achievement transformation, attract projects to Jinan, and enhance ties among global manufacturing companies. 

The Jinan government plans to launch a series of policies on land use, industrial park development, finance, talent, industry, a guarantee system and cooperation with Germany to speed up the construction of the Sino-German SMEs Cooperation Zone.

Furthermore, Jinan has built a collaborative innovation center in Stuttgart, Germany. With such infrastructures as a public sci-tech platform and labs, the city is trying to explore a diversified service mechanism integrating basic, value-added and specific services, and form a new incubation model that features local registration, overseas incubation and domestic acceleration in a bid to bringing in foreign investment and encourage SMEs to go global.

The zone's detailed planning was unveiled at the 2018 Sino-German SME Cooperation & Communication Conference in Jinan city on Oct 31-Nov 2.