The 2026 Zhongguancun Forum (ZGC Forum)  Annual Conference, a global barometer of technological innovation, was held in Beijing from March 25 to 29 on the theme "Full Integration Between Technological and Industrial Innovation."

At the venue, the momentum of this integration was palpable. At the 2026 ZGC International Technology Trade Fair, new project signings in frontier industries were announced one after another, and the buzz around technology transactions and commercialization continued to build.

From the laboratory to the production line, China's technology trading market is experiencing unprecedented growth. At the forum, Chen Hongsheng, an official from China's Ministry of Science and Technology, presented a striking set of figures: the value of technology contract transactions nationwide surged from 2.83 trillion RMB in 2020 to 6.84 trillion RMB in 2024, a remarkable 141 percent increase.

Another set of data released at the forum shows that in Beijing, the value of technology contract transactions rose from 700.57 billion RMB in 2021 to 986.5 billion RMB in 2025, representing a 40.8 percent increase. With the strong national momentum continuing, technology transactions are expected to expand across more regions in 2026.

Behind the rising numbers lies a deeper transformation: China's role in the global innovation landscape is evolving, while the mechanisms that turn scientific breakthroughs into market-ready technologies are being rapidly reshaped.

From one-way introduction to two-way collaboration

Once largely seen as a destination for imported technologies, China's technology market is increasingly becoming a hub of two-way collaboration, where ideas, talent and technologies flow in multiple directions.

The trend is reflected in trade data. In 2025, China's intellectual property royalty exports increased by 26.3 percent, with advanced technologies in fields such as new energy, biomedicine and high-end equipment entering global industrial chains through patent licensing and international partnerships.

"We must not only pursue original innovation, but also attract global talent and research outcomes to provide high-level technological supply for China's development," said Liu Qing, director of the National Technology Innovation Center par Excellence.

The center has established 10 overseas representative offices, including in Silicon Valley, Northern Europe, Israel and the United Arab Emirates.

Liu told the forum the center has set up a proof-of-concept fund at the University of New South Wales in Australia, investing around 1.2 million Australian dollars annually to support overseas innovations with strong commercialization potential that are interested in entering the Chinese market.

Operating under the model of "discover overseas, incubate in China, and serve global markets," the initiative attracted 15 cutting-edge projects last year in areas such as new materials and flexible displays.

From passive waiting to active integration

China's technology market is also undergoing a structural shift — from passively waiting for research outcomes to actively integrating innovation resources.

Chen Dongmin, director of the industrialization committee at the Songshan Lake Materials Laboratory, explained that the proof-of-concept stage often struggles to secure investment because of its high technological and market risks. To address this challenge, the Songshan Lake model uses government funding to leverage private investment.

An initial 1 billion RMB in fiscal funding was invested in 27 projects, which subsequently attracted more than 1.2 billion RMB in venture capital, creating a powerful synergy between public funding and market forces.

Nationwide, the strategy of investing earlier and in smaller startups is gaining traction. Yang Tao, deputy director of the National Institution for Finance and Development, said China’s equity investment market reversed its decline in 2025, reaching 928.7 billion RMB. Investment in seed-stage enterprises surged 78.4 percent, while funding for early-stage firms rose 12.7 percent.

Supporting this trend is an increasingly robust institutional framework. Social security funds have established technology investment funds totaling over 160 billion RMB in provinces such as Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Sichuan, focusing on long-term investment in hard-tech companies.

Alongside technology finance, China is also strengthening its ecosystem of technology managers and professional services, which acts as a key facilitator of technology transfer. By the end of 2024, universities and research institutes nationwide had established 2,364 technology transfer institutions, while 36 national training bases had collectively trained more than 110,000 technology transfer professionals.

From bottlenecks to coordinated innovation

Besides financial support and professional services, localized institutional innovations are helping remove the remaining bottlenecks in technology commercialization.

Kang Kaining, general manager of Southwest Jiaotong University Research Institute (Chengdu) Co., Ltd., highlighted the reforms allowing researchers to establish limited partnerships and co-own service-related invention patents. These policies help bypass rigid salary caps and significantly boost researchers' incentives to commercialize their discoveries. The approach is now being replicated across Sichuan and other western regions.

Institutional innovation is also taking place across entire industrial chains. Yuan Yu, deputy director of the National (Qingdao) Integrated Innovation Demonstration Zone, described a collaborative mechanism in which national ministries and central state-owned enterprises translate production bottlenecks into research challenges that are openly published nationwide. Research institutions and private firms can then compete to address them, creating a coordinated innovation ecosystem.

Viewed through the lens of the 2026 ZGC Forum, the rapid rise of China's technology trading market is not the result of a single factor. Rather, it reflects broader global engagement, institutional reforms, and numerous grassroots innovations working together. As a nationwide network for technology commercialization takes shape, a more dynamic, innovation-driven China is rapidly emerging.