Chongchuan district, the main urban district of Nantong in East China's Jiangsu province, held a press conference on March 5 to explain the functions and release the work plan of its newly-established science and technology innovation committee.

The first district-level sci-tech innovation committee in the province, unveiled on Feb 26, was set up to promote technological development and enhance innovation capacity in Chongchuan.

The committee's three-year action plan designates more than 10,000-mu (666.67-hectares) as the Sci-Tech Innovation Core Driving Area, which will be part of the Nantong North High-tech Industrial Development Zone now being built under the new name of the Innovation City Pilot Zone.

The Sci-Tech Innovation Core Driving Area will focus on the integrated circuit industry, and will strive to attract high-quality projects, introduce university research institutes and gather excellent R&D teams. Under the work plan it will consist of one R&D core area, three development axes, four development corridors and several clusters for living, industrial, and service purposes.

According to Liu Hao, Party secretary of Chongchuan district, the committee will carry out institutional reforms to break through the difficulties of innovation and bring out the city's best, turning it into an influential innovation demonstration highland in the Yangtze River Delta.

Xi Ronghua, a member of the Standing Committee of the Chongchuan CPC District Committee, stated the district's sci-tech development targets for this year, which include increasing the total social investment in R&D as a proportion of GDP to 2.7 percent, establishing more than three new entrepreneurial or innovative platforms at the provincial level and above, and creating no fewer than eight new corporate scientific research platforms at the municipal level and above.