A beam of light of China's power

On [specific date], over ten thousand marathon runners, with an average age of [specific age], dressed in orange competition attire, set off from Huazhong University of Science and Technology. They ran along the trajectory of Wuhan East Lake High-Tech Development Zone's growth, following the path of innovation and entrepreneurship paved by generations of builders. Heading east, they raced towards the Future Science and Technology City, paying tribute to the many years of innovative and entrepreneurial journey of the East Lake High-Tech Development Zone.

Wuhan East Lake High-Tech Development Zone, also known as "China Optics Valley," has developed like a marathon. Many years ago, it was just "a centimeter outside the map of Wuhan." Through years of relentless pursuit of light, the zone has continuously strived for "higher" and "newer" goals—transforming from a slender optical fiber into a brilliant beam of light, and from a handful of small enterprises into the world's largest research and production base for optical communications. It has become one of the key embodiments of President Xi Jinping's important discourse on scientific and technological innovation.

In that year, Zhao Zisen, an academician and expert in fiber optic communication, drew the first practical optical fiber in China here, marking the beginning of the East Lake High-Tech Development Zone's journey towards light.

Named after "light" and thriving because of "light," the East Lake High-Tech Development Zone is the only national independent innovation demonstration zone in China named after "light." The first quartz optical fiber in China was born here, and the first optical transmission system in the country was established here. How to continuously advance technological innovation and promote high-quality industrial development has been a significant topic of exploration throughout the development of the East Lake High-Tech Development Zone.

Over the years, the East Lake High-Tech Development Zone has fully leveraged its advantages of concentrated educational and scientific resources and a rich pool of talent. It has consistently promoted the integration of government, industry, academia, and research, focusing on enhancing independent innovation capabilities and vigorously developing high-tech industries. This continuous effort has pushed the development of high technology and the realization of industrialization to the forefront and deeper levels.

A "strong magnetic field" for technological innovation is taking shape. The East Lake High-Tech Development Zone has successively achieved breakthroughs in a series of key core technologies, giving birth to a large number of global firsts and Chinese innovations—a fiber as thin as a hair can accommodate all people on Earth making phone calls simultaneously, the field of "ultra-large capacity, ultra-long distance, ultra-high speed" optical transmission has broken world records year after year, the world's first silicon photonics thin-film lithium niobate photoelectric integrated wafer was launched, the two-way brain-computer interface chip has achieved international leadership, the world's first multi-nuclear magnetic resonance imaging system for human lung gas was launched, the world's first plant-derived recombinant human serum albumin injection was successfully developed, and the National Pulsed High Magnetic Field Science Center has been operating for many years, creating multiple world records in pulsed magnetic fields. Technological innovation has become the confidence of Guanggu in competing for international industrial discourse power.

High-level Talent Hub. Last month, Ge Xiaoming, a post-90s process technology expert at the Jiufengshan Laboratory Process Center in Hubei, participated in the International Conference on Electronic Science and Engineering. Representing the laboratory, he shared the latest research findings—efficient and low-damage gallium nitride (GaN) etching technology—with top experts and scholars from around the world. In less than a year since its operation, Jiufengshan Laboratory has attracted nearly a hundred semiconductor industry chain companies to gather around it, amassing over ten thousand talents in the semiconductor field and giving rise to a group of pioneers in advanced technology. There are several post-90s researchers like Ge Xiaoming at Jiufengshan Laboratory, who graduated from top universities worldwide and came to the Donghu High-Tech Zone for a common goal. By consistently focusing on deploying innovation and talent chains around the industrial chain, and transforming education, technology, and talent into the "maximum increment" of technological innovation and industrial development, Donghu High-Tech Zone's talent policy has undergone years of iterative upgrades, gathering over a thousand high-level talents of various categories. In recent years, an average of ten thousand university students have stayed annually for employment and entrepreneurship, leading to the emergence of a number of industry professors and academician chairmen, creating a vibrant scene of enterprise leadership and university-local integration development. To date, the permanent population of Donghu High-Tech Zone has reached one million, with more than half holding a university undergraduate degree, achieving a developmental leap from "a beam of light" to "the city of light," evolving from a single-function technology park to a relatively well-functioning technology new town.

Over the years, the East Lake High-Tech Development Zone has focused on transforming scientific and technological achievements into real productive forces, exploring a path of technological innovation and high-quality development with its own characteristics.

Adhere to talent leadership and persistently transform the advantages of science, education, and talent into victories in innovative development. "Technological innovation relies on two things: investment and talent." In a certain year, Hubei Province and Wuhan City planned to establish the "East Lake Technology-Intensive Economic Zone" around the East Lake area, leveraging the intellectual resources of this region to cultivate high-tech industries and strive to convert scientific and technological achievements into productive forces, marking the embryonic form of the East Lake High-Tech Development Zone. Subsequently, the East Lake High-Tech Development Zone implemented a "project start-up, rolling development" model, vigorously supporting high-tech talents in establishing technology enterprises, making full use of existing small and medium-sized enterprises and school-run factories to form research and production consortia, focusing on the development of high-tech industries such as optical communication, electronic information, and laser, with the initial industrial structure beginning to take shape. Industrial development cannot be separated from talent support, and how to attract researchers out of laboratories and school gates became a key issue. In a certain year, the "Optics Valley Golden Ten Articles" were introduced, proposing a "70-30 split" of university achievement conversion benefits, and allowing teachers to leave their posts to start businesses and students to take leave to start businesses. The policy also proposed that if intellectual property rights of universities and research institutes are not implemented and converted within a year, the achievement creators or teams can autonomously implement the conversion under the premise that the ownership of the achievements remains unchanged. This move promoted a batch of major achievements, such as the "Micro-Optical Sectioning Tomography Imaging System" from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, to the market. By stimulating the innovation and entrepreneurship vitality of researchers, the high-tech industry of the East Lake High-Tech Development Zone rapidly rose. In a certain year, the East Lake High-Tech Development Zone was approved as a national optoelectronic information industry base, with the scale of the optoelectronic information industry first exceeding one billion yuan in a certain year, and breaking through ten billion yuan in another year. In a certain year, the Wuhan optoelectronic information industry cluster was selected as a national advanced manufacturing cluster.

Adhere to independent and controllable development, and unwaveringly promote the construction of national strategic scientific and technological forces. In recent years, the East Lake High-Tech Development Zone has focused on the construction of the Hubei East Lake Science City, continuously increasing investment, with the intensity of R&D investment reaching .%. It ensures the efficient operation of the precision gravity measurement research facility, and accelerates the construction of facilities such as the national crop phenomics research and deep geotechnical engineering disturbance simulation. The zone continues to strengthen the "National Laboratory + National Key Laboratory + Hubei Laboratory" system, supporting national innovation centers in areas such as industrial software, high-end optical chips, digital manufacturing technology, and agricultural technology to play a leading role in industrial technology. At the beginning of the year, the National Digital Construction Technology Innovation Center, relying on the scientific research strength of the School of Mechanical Science and Engineering at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, was approved, positioning itself as a national strategic scientific and technological force in the field of digital construction in China. To help the center grow and strengthen, the East Lake High-Tech Development Zone not only supports the establishment of an operational entity company for the center but also provides construction and operational funding for consecutive years, in line with the support policies for Hubei laboratories. After years of construction, the National Digital Construction Technology Innovation Center has provided a batch of high-quality source technologies for the field of digital construction in China, offering technical support for projects such as the construction of lunar bases.