Sanya, a tropical tourism city in South China's Hainan province, is transforming into an innovation hub within the Hainan Free Trade Port. Central to this development is Yazhou Bay Science and Technology City, which serves as a vital growth center for the advancement of new industrial formats.

YZBSTC has established four key platforms: deep-sea technology innovation, tropical agricultural research and breeding, tropical agricultural technology innovation, and global germplasm resource transfer.

It has built an industry-academia-research collaboration model that deeply integrates research institutions, universities, and high-tech enterprises. With over 40 research institutions, such as the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, as well as leading enterprises like China Seed Group and Longping High-Tech, it has welcomed 3,368 high-level talents as of December 2024,

Annually, over 700 research units and companies from 29 provinces across China and nearly 7,000 researchers engage in tropical agricultural research in Hainan, particularly in Sanya.

Furthermore, with the South China Sea being China's largest and deepest sea area, the YZBSTC's strategic location offers unique opportunities for deep-sea research. The development of the Nanshan Port in Sanya as a comprehensive scientific research hub focusing on deep-sea exploration further bolsters the city's position in the deep-sea technology industry.

In 2024, Yazhou district invested a significant amount of 3.1 billion yuan ($424 million) in research and development, marking a 24 percent year-on-year increase. The value of technology contracts exceeded 900 million yuan, with patent authorizations accounting for 54.1 percent of the city's total and the number of high-tech enterprises reaching 177.

An aerial view of YZBSTC. [Photo provided to english.sanya.gov.cn]