In China, cities are boosting the tech sector with subsidies

It is often described as Shenzhen's "little sister." Like the latter, Zhuhai was just a small fishing village in the early 1980s, before being propelled into the flagship of a China open to global trade. And to innovations of all kinds, explains the South China Morning Post. ( SCMP ), which announces the creation of the new Zhuhai industrial and technological park.

This, the Hong Kong daily continues, is a start-up incubation project launched “as part of an ambitious program to boost its artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics sectors, after the successes of DeepSeek [ at the forefront of generative AI ] and Unitree [ a pioneer in humanoid robotics ] sparked a national race to create the next dominant companies in the technology sector.”

As a result, the Zhuhai municipality has released subsidies in the form of “computing power vouchers” totaling 500 million yuan (61 million euros).

A way to focus the activity of this technology park on sectors that rely directly on large algorithmic models – each eligible company will be reimbursed for half of its expenditure on computing power, capped at 10 million yuan (1.2 million euros).

Zhuhai's investment plan, the SCMP adds, "is part of a broader initiative by Guangdong province to establish itself as a global hub for AI and robotics." Moreover, last week, the "big sister" city of Shenzhen, also located in Guangdong, unveiled two investment funds totaling 7 billion yuan (about 860 million euros) to support start-ups in robotics and so-called "smart" connected devices.

Across China, the newspaper concludes, “other local governments are pursuing similar initiatives to promote their AI and robotics development efforts.” The race is only just beginning.