(Yicai Global) Aug. 29 -- As an increasingly important engine of economic development, China’s 169 national-level high-tech zones account for more than 13 percent of gross domestic product, according to a new report by the Ministry of Science and Technology and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Their GDP reached CNY13.6 trillion (USD2 trillion) in 2020, an annual increase of 11.5 percent and equivalent to 13.3 percent of China's total that year, according to the report released at the Pujiang Innovation Forum in Shanghai on Aug. 27.

The number of staff in scientific and tech jobs at companies in the national high-tech zones was 5.1 million in 2020, 21.6 percent of the total headcount in those zones, the report said. Of them, 66.4 percent were in eastern regions, 18.5 percent in central regions, and 12.6 percent in western regions.

Guangdong, Jiangsu, Beijing, Hubei, Zhejiang, Shandong, and Shanghai were the leading provincial-level administrative regions in terms of numbers of research and development staff in high-tech zones, with Jiangsu province seeing the biggest gain from 2019.

Amid the pandemic, more and more overseas students have returned to their home country, and the number of returnees in the high-tech zones rose 23.2 percent in 2020, Shang Yanjie, a science ministry official noted. In addition, cross-industry cooperation between biomedical, artificial intelligence and new materials companies related to pandemic prevention has become a new driver for the economy.

As of 2020, more than 1,600 listed companies were operating in the national high-tech zones, of which 1,494 were listed in China and 190 were listed overseas, according to the report.

Editors: Dou Shicong, Tom Litting