This photo taken on Feb. 28, 2024 shows mechanical arms operating at an intelligent workshop in Wuxi, east China's Jiangsu Province. (Xinhua/Ji Chunpeng)

East China's economic powerhouse Jiangsu Province pledged more efforts to develop new quality productive forces this year, with the goals of building new national labs and fostering more tech firms.

Xu Kunlin, governor of Jiangsu, told a press conference on Tuesday that more efforts will be made to boost basic research, industrial upgrades, and business innovation.

Xu said the province has allocated a total of 2.48 billion yuan (about 350 million U.S. dollars) for this year's basic research, including improving labs and advancing major research programs. One target is to boost the number of national labs led by the province to over 40 from the current 35.

In terms of industrial upgrades, Xu said more efforts will be taken to promote strategic emerging industries and build future industrial systems, as well as make the manufacturing sector more intelligent, digitalized, and internet-connected.

Xu cited a successful case of an upgraded traditional foundry enterprise in Suzhou City. Through intelligent transformation, the company's demonstration workshop improved its automation rate to over 90 percent, cut the product customization cycle from seven days to half a day, and more than doubled the per capita productivity.

The governor said the province also aims to increase the number of high-tech businesses and small and medium-sized tech enterprises to 55,000 and 100,000 this year, respectively.

Jiangsu will introduce a number of new policies to build an enterprise-led innovation system that features deep integration of enterprises, universities, and research institutes, Xu said.

The province saw its regional gross domestic product increase 5.8 percent year on year to 12.82 trillion yuan in 2023, the second largest nationwide, only slightly lower than that of south China's Guangdong Province.