- Policy toolkit accelerates innovation, industrial upgrades, and enterprise support across the province
- DeepSeek-V4 rollout, export growth, and targeted funding highlight Zhejiang’s push for new-production capacity
Technology investment in Zhejiang hit 172.05 billion yuan ($25.28 billion) in the first quarter of 2026, up 9.8% year-on-year, as the province ramps up its “8 plus 4” economic policy framework, according to provincial data released this week.
The “8 plus 4” system combines eight policy packages—covering areas such as technology innovation, advanced manufacturing cluster cultivation, and expanded effective investment—with four resource guarantees in finance, land, energy, and talent.
The move reflects a targeted effort to amplify the impact of fiscal funds across innovation, industrial upgrades, and enterprise support.
“The framework ensures that policy ‘trickles down to’ precisely where it is needed, and funding reaches projects fast,” said a provincial official, noting that first-quarter funds hit major targets.
In the innovation sector, Zhejiang plunged 16.14 billion yuan into 211 science and technology foundation projects, with an investment completion rate of 38.47%.
Special re-loans supported 1161 equipment upgrade projects with 47.3 billion yuan, while ultra-long-term sovereign bond funds totaled 9.57 billion yuan, both topping national rankings.
Land allocations rose 11% year-on-year to 81,800 hectares in the January–April period, including 33,800 hectares for industrial use.
In computing and AI, the province now hosts over 180 EFLOPS of total computing power, while DeepSeek-V4 models were launched with context windows of 1 million tokens, nearly eight times the V3 series.
Trade also showed momentum: goods imports and exports hit 1.38 trillion yuan in the first quarter, up 7.1%, with exports exceeding 1 trillion yuan for the first time.
Zhejiang now counts 11.04 million business entities, a 4.7% increase year-on-year.
The province has set up 19 so-called “innovation outcome repositories” to accelerate commercialization of university and research institute patents, with more than 10,000 projects currently registered.
To tackle core technological bottlenecks, Zhejiang issued “12 measures supporting enterprise-led R&D,” ensuring that over 80% of major projects come from enterprise demand and enterprise participation.
Local governments are adapting policies to regional conditions. Ningbo launched a three-year 100 billion yuan credit scheme for SME industrial clusters, while Hangzhou provides “compute vouchers” and “model vouchers” to AI firms, with maximum subsidies of 15 million yuan per company.
Since the “8 plus 4” policy’s inception, 189 updates have been issued province-wide.
Looking ahead, provincial authorities plan to increase fiscal allocations under “8 plus 4” to 106.57 billion yuan in 2026, maintain targeted support for private enterprises, and introduce a quarterly disclosure mechanism to track policy implementation.
