Oct. 24 (NBD) -- When foreigners are asked what they would like to bring back to their countries, they think of shared bicycles, high-speed rail, Alipay, and e-commerce, which stand out with a reputation of China's "four great new inventions" in modern times.

Thanks to the mass entrepreneurship and innovation across China, those innovation achievements have been making the daily life of the public increasingly convenient and greatly driving the country's economic growth. And hi-tech zones throughout the country are playing the lead role. Among them, Chengdu Hi-Tech Zone in China's southwestern area attained great achievements in the first half of this year.

In the first six month of this year, Chengdu Hi-Tech Zone posted gross regional production of 70.11 billion yuan (10.58 billion U.S. dollars), with a year-on-year growth of 9.0 percent. And the added value of emerging sectors of strategic importance increased by 27.6 percent compared to the same period of the previous year.

Besides, Chengdu Hi-Tech Zone has attracted global technological giants to set up businesses here. Earlier this month, healthcare giant Medtronic broke ground on its medical innovation center in the region, and Apple inked a deal to establish a technology service center there, which will be the tech giant's biggest center of its kind in China.

Chengdu Hi-Tech Zone embraces innovation and builds a competitive modern industrial system covering the electronic information industry and biomedical industry. It embodies the rapid development of Chengdu, which brought up the three-stage development strategy of building a central city in western China first, then a national central city and finally a global city. 

Email: gaohan@nbd.com.cn