2026 Zhongguancun Forum Annual Conference Opening Ceremony Announces Four Major Achievements, 40 Policy Supports for Expanding the International Science and Innovation Center

(Source: Qianlong.com)

Yesterday (25th), at the opening ceremony of the 2026 Zhongguancun Forum Annual Conference, four major achievements were simultaneously released: Beijing (Jing-Jin-Ji) International Science and Technology Innovation Center support policies, the “Open Science International Cooperation Action Plan,” the “Top Ten Chinese Scientific Advances of 2025,” and the “Global Engineering Frontiers of 2025.”

Series of Support Policies Build a Collaborative Innovation Network

Beijing’s “Three Cities and One District” serve as the main platform, Zhongguancun as the main battleground, the Jing-Jin and Jing-Xiong new quality productivity corridors as the backbone, Tianjin Binhai New Area, Hebei Xiong’an New Area, and Shijiazhuang as important pivots. The Beijing (Jing-Jin-Ji) International Science and Technology Innovation Center will establish an efficient collaborative innovation network. Yesterday, relevant ministries and central agencies jointly introduced 40 support policies for the Beijing (Jing-Jin-Ji) International Science and Technology Innovation Center.

To strengthen the layout of strategic scientific and technological forces, newly issued policies allow universities and research institutes affiliated with central departments to apply local science and technology policies under the premise of compliance with national regulations; explore the establishment of the National Natural Science Foundation Jing-Jin-Ji Joint Fund to support high-level new R&D institutions and enterprise-type science and technology innovation platforms to participate in applications; promote high-quality construction of regional technology transfer and transformation centers at universities, and support new R&D institutions to undertake major national scientific and technological tasks.

Deep integration of scientific and technological innovation with industrial innovation is an urgent need to accelerate the development of new quality productivity and build a modern industrial system. Support policies propose establishing an artificial intelligence industry sandbox regulatory system and improving risk monitoring and early warning mechanisms. For innovative drugs, urgently needed clinical medicines, multi-valent vaccines, and other products with special process or equipment requirements, Jing-Jin-Ji will explore segmented production modes; support high-level hospitals to conduct exploratory clinical research on new technologies and therapies, and allow qualified tertiary hospitals to carry out clinical research on stem cells and somatic cells and file with relevant departments of the State Council as required.

Policies to improve services and guarantees for foreign talents, reasonably expand the enrollment scale of professional degree master’s and doctoral students, will help Jing-Jin-Ji attract and gather top global talents. Financial and fiscal policies will also be strengthened, including support for overseas asset management institutions to set up equity investment funds for technological innovation. Policies promoting integrated science and technology land use, implementing negative list management, and allowing incubated startups and enterprises to flexibly adjust their business activities will help improve the science and technology service system in Jing-Jin-Ji.

The path of open innovation in Jing-Jin-Ji will become broader and broader. Support policies allow domestic innovation entities to collaborate with overseas institutions to undertake major scientific and technological tasks, support pilot policies for foreign R&D institutions in Jing-Jin-Ji, and support the initiation of international science and technology organizations.

Next, Jing-Jin-Ji will accelerate the construction of the International Science and Technology Innovation Center, aiming to become an important source of independent innovation and a major origin of original innovation in China, and to take the lead in building a China-style modernization pilot zone and demonstration zone.

Beijing Opens Its Major Scientific Facilities to the World

At the forum’s opening ceremony, China extended a sincere invitation to the world with the “Open Science International Cooperation Action Plan,” opening and sharing ten major scientific infrastructure facilities with the global community: ultra-deep underground low-radiation physics experimental facilities, space environment ground simulation devices, pulsed high magnetic field experimental devices, steady-state high magnetic field experimental devices, Meridian Project, extreme condition comprehensive experimental devices, high-altitude cosmic ray observatories, the 500-meter aperture spherical radio telescope, the “Striver” manned submersible, and all-superconducting Tokamak nuclear fusion experimental device.

Currently, the comprehensive extreme condition experimental device located in Huairou Science City provides extreme experimental conditions such as ultra-low temperatures, ultra-high pressures, strong magnetic fields, and ultrafast optical fields for domestic and international research teams. It is an important large-scale scientific device in China’s condensed matter physics field, managed by the Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Over the past month, researcher Zhou Rui, head of the NMR measurement station at the comprehensive extreme condition experimental device, has been working with international users to complete experiments. Zhou Rui said the station can continuously provide temperatures as low as 20 millikelvin and magnetic fields up to 26 Tesla, which are among the best experimental conditions worldwide.

Since its trial operation in 2022, 16 international institutions from 11 countries have used the comprehensive extreme condition experimental device for experiments, including well-known academic research institutions. “Our device always adheres to the concept of international open sharing and treats all experiment applications equally,” said Cheng Jingguang, deputy director and researcher at the Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. “International cooperation to explore the boundaries of human knowledge is routine in basic science.”

As a major national scientific infrastructure, the comprehensive extreme condition experimental device offers free machine time to global public scientific research institutions, with users only bearing travel and related costs. “This is also common practice internationally,” Cheng Jingguang explained. The device conducts two rounds of routine project calls each year, and after peer review, users can conduct experiments on the device once or multiple times based on approval.

Currently, Huairou Science City boasts a high density of scientific facilities, ranking among the top globally. As the main carrier of national strategic scientific forces, Beijing has long promoted large scientific facilities from “domestic sharing” to “global openness.” During the 14th Five-Year Plan, Beijing will continue to expand open innovation, share facility platform benefits, gather global innovation elements, and promote cross-border flow of talents, data, and technologies.

Top Ten Chinese Scientific Advances of 2025 Demonstrate Breakthroughs in Basic Research

From decoding the lunar back evolution history with Chang’e-6 samples and major national projects, to elucidating inflammatory aging mechanisms and multi-dimensional targeted interventions in life sciences, and to the gradual realization of future materials like high-performance flexible layered solar cells, the “Top Ten Chinese Scientific Advances of 2025” reflect and represent China’s significant progress in basic research.

Every year, about 300k patients with end-stage liver disease in China require liver transplants to survive. However, only around 7,000 donors are available annually, creating a huge gap. The scientific community has long explored xenotransplantation techniques to expand organ sources and save more lives. Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and director of the Xenotransplantation Translational Research Institute at the Air Force Medical University, Dou Kefeng, led the team to complete the world’s first preclinical trial of gene-edited pig liver transplantation into humans. This achievement was included in the 2025 “Top Ten Chinese Scientific Advances.”

“Success in this research has boosted our confidence. Last month, we performed an ex vivo xenotransplantation surgery on a patient with severe liver failure, temporarily replacing the patient’s failing liver with a pig liver,” Dou Kefeng said. After establishing extracorporeal liver circulation for over 60 hours, the patient’s liver function indicators normalized, successfully passing the critical period. Subsequently, the patient successfully underwent liver transplantation and has been discharged. “We hope our efforts can help solve the current shortage of transplantable organs and benefit more patients in the future.”

Another highlighted achievement is a key breakthrough in the field of two-dimensional semiconductors—the world’s first 2D semiconductor/silicon hybrid “Changying” flash memory chip. This chip achieves the highest storage speed in human technological history, up to 400 picoseconds, a million times faster than existing flash memory technologies.

Today, this achievement has moved from the laboratory to the production line. Zhou Peng, deputy director of the IC Innovation Institute at Fudan University, said that in the lab, the team has designed and fabricated a new architecture memory with a capacity of 1,000 bits, and is currently advancing the pilot production line. The next step is to increase the capacity to 16 megabits. “If productization proceeds smoothly, in the next 5 to 10 years, everyone’s mobile phones could run large models locally at full speed, greatly promoting various industries,” Zhou Peng said with anticipation.

Analysis Identifies 189 Global Engineering Frontiers

Based on data from 2.16 million high-impact papers, 530k high-impact patents, and various scientific news, the “2025 Global Engineering Frontiers” analysis identified 94 engineering research frontiers and 95 engineering development frontiers.

The report shows that artificial intelligence is driving a generational leap in engineering paradigms. Among the 189 frontiers identified, 74 are closely related to AI, including AI-assisted energy material design, multi-agent construction, and collaborative technologies. AI is pushing engineering practice into a new stage of automation, systematicity, and intelligence, fundamentally improving efficiency, quality, and the ability to handle complex problems.

Applications like non-invasive brain-machine interfaces are accelerating the transformation of engineering frontiers into new quality productivity. Seventy-seven frontiers closely related to scenario-driven applications will undergo full-process, systematic validation, speeding up the realization and value release of new technologies, products, and business models, and driving iterative innovation and industrial transformation, injecting strong momentum into cultivating and developing new quality productivity.

The scope of engineering innovation continues to push the boundaries of human cognition. Recent achievements such as in-situ utilization of lunar surface metal resources and 3D reconstruction of deep-earth and deep-sea geological structures have attracted widespread attention. Today, engineering innovation is expanding into unknown, extreme, and complex fields, continuously enhancing human capacity to understand and transform the world, providing larger-scale, lower-cost, and more valuable technological support for expanding human activity domains. Meanwhile, green and low-carbon initiatives are driving a deep reconstruction of the engineering system chain, from source reduction and process decarbonization to end-point carbon sequestration, with a full-chain engineering innovation path accelerating formation, leading to systemic changes in energy structure, technical routes, and industrial models within the engineering system.

Since 2017, the Chinese Academy of Engineering has annually organized “Global Engineering Frontiers” research, releasing Chinese and English research reports worldwide. Over the past nine years, the results of the Global Engineering Frontiers have effectively played roles in academic leadership, industry guidance, and decision-making reference, receiving broad attention and positive evaluations from all sectors domestically and internationally.