The province of Shandong has made great progress in increasing input in innovation, as well as cultivating new areas of growth and replacing old growth drivers with new ones to advance regional high-quality development in recent years, said local officials.

Over the past three years, the average annual growth rate of the "Four New Economy" (new technology, new business pattern, new development mode, and new industry) added value in Shandong has exceeded 20 percent, and its proportion in the provincial GDP has increased from 21.7 percent in 2017 to 30 percent in 2020, official data shows.

In a bid to advance structural reform and improve industrial structure, the province has implemented special measures to deal with more than 110,000 small, poorly managed and pollution-heavy enterprises and closed over 1,800 pollution-heavy chemical production enterprises.

Shandong has been working to remove all institutional barriers to innovation, fully unlock innovation potential and energize the market, said local authorities.

Over the past three years, the number of market entities in Shandong has increased by 46 percent to 11.56 million, while the number of high-tech enterprises has doubled. The number of national enterprise technology centers in Shandong is ranked first in China.

During the same period, Shandong has carried out more than 600 major scientific and technological innovation projects. A fund of more than 10 billion yuan ($1.54 billion) for scientific and technological innovation and development has been set up each year to tackle key problems in core technologies.