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Shenzhen bets on AI for science to boost research productivity
Shenzhen said its 2024 R&D intensity was led by company spending, a structure it argues can help turn AI into reliable scientific tools.
The latest competition in artificial intelligence is shifting from building the largest models to using AI to speed scientific discovery, according to analysis by SCMP Economy.
The US Department of Energy’s Genesis Mission is aiming to connect 17 national laboratories into an integrated discovery platform to double research productivity and impact within a decade, while SCMP Economy notes similar momentum in China is increasingly being organized through cities rather than only at the national level.
SCMP Economy highlights that Beijing’s 2025 plan calls for common scientific intelligence infrastructure, at least 10 high quality scientific databases, more than 10 million users and at least eight benchmark applications by 2027. It also points to Shanghai’s “Hundred Teams, Hundred Projects” initiative, which can support up to 70% of approved investment, capped at 50 million yuan, as examples of city-led efforts to build AI for science capabilities.
For Shenzhen, SCMP Economy frames the opportunity as AI becoming a new source of scientific productivity and industrial growth, while warning against simply copying other cities. It cites Shenzhen’s 2024 R&D spending of 245.31 billion yuan as the highest among Chinese cities, and says companies accounted for more than 93% of that spend, arguing this closeness between research, engineering and deployment is key to turning AI into practical scientific tools.