The innovation index, a figure that measures and evaluates the innovation capability of the zones, has risen from 100 points in 2010 to 233 points in 2017, according to a 2018 evaluation report. The report has been published annually since 2013 by the Institutes of Science and Development of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The problem of unbalanced development among high-tech zones has also greatly improved, the report added. High-tech zones from central and western parts of China saw strong growth in their overall innovation capabilities last year. This was in part thanks to major cities in those regions working closely with the zones to unleash their innovation potential.

The index is based on five main criteria for innovation: resources, start-up environment, company activity and performance, international cooperation and the effects on development.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of China’s high-tech development zones, which added 12 new zones this year to reach a total of 169 as of October, said Wang Shengguang, director of the research center on China’s high-tech zones at the academy’s Institutes of Science and Development.

“After 30 years, the high-tech zones have successfully fulfilled their mission of pioneering China’s innovation systems, driving socioeconomic development, leading high-tech industries’ growth and radiating their positive influence to the nation and the world,” he said.

In 2017, the 156 national high-tech zones that provided data reported a total of 9.51 trillion yuan ($1.38 trillion) in goods and services, representing 11.5 percent of the national GDP last year, the report said. These zones also yielded a net profit of around 2.14 trillion yuan, and exported goods and services valued at $478 billion last year.

Some of the zones’ most profitable high-tech fields included electronics and telecommunications, biomedicine, mechatronics, new materials, new and efficient energy, environmental protection and space technologies. Mechatronics is the combination of mechanical engineering, computing and electronics.

The national high-tech zones are also heavyweights in research and development. Companies from those 156 zones spent more than 616 billion yuan in R&D last year, making up around 35 percent of the total R&D spending in China.

In 2017, there were 2,922 national research institutes, including 341 important “state-key laboratories”, that were either located in or worked with the national high-tech zones. This meant two-thirds of the nation’s state-level research institutes were linked to high-tech zones.

But in comparison to Silicon Valley, the world’s leading innovation ecosystem, China’s high-tech zones are still behind in terms of attracting quality foreign talent and venture capital investments, Wang said.

In 2016, over 37.8 percent of the population of the Silicon Valley area was foreign born, with many working in computer science, engineering, medicine and other high-tech sectors, the report said. Only around 1 percent of personnel working in China’s high-tech zones were foreigners.

As for venture capital, Silicon Valley received $14 billion worth of investment last year. The national high-tech zones received 37.4 billion yuan last year, which was just around 39 percent of the amount Silicon Valley had.

“We still need more effort to transform high-tech zones into a fertile ground for attracting and nurturing quality talent,” Wang said. “At the same time, we need to create innovative mechanisms to facilitate the commercialization of knowledge and scientific output.”

Samsung Electronics, the world’s No. 1 memory chip provider, is considering slowing the pace of expanding its production facilities next year amid negative forecasts about growth of the global semiconductor market.

At a biannual meeting on the tech titan’s global business strategies held last week, the device solutions division’s main agenda was how to cope with the expected oversupply of memory chips next year, as demand is widely forecast to go downhill, with the market facing a stall in the “super cycle” driven by an emerging data economy.

“Adjusting the pace of increasing production capacities for DRAM and NAND flash chips was discussed at the meeting presided over by Vice Chairman Kim Ki-nam and heads of the chipmaker’s overseas branches,” an industry source said.

According to news reports, Samsung is planning to curtail its production of memory chips next year to bit growth of less than 20 percent for DRAM and 30 percent for NAND.

Samsung said during a conference call on its third-quarter earnings in November that its annual bit growth for DRAM is estimated to be around 20 percent and 40 percent for NAND.

Bit growth refers to the increased supply of memory chips in bit volume that helps estimate capacities of each chip provider.

With the lowered bit growth estimates, Samsung is expected to conservatively execute its investment plans for memory production, industry watchers say.

Its 30 trillion-won investment plan for construction of a second fabrication line for DRAM at its newest Pyeongtaek campus in Gyeonggi Province could be carried out more carefully than initially planned, as part of Samsung’s strategy to prevent falls in DRAM prices by limiting new growth in supply.

The second Pyeongtaek plant is scheduled to be completed by the end of the first half of next year.

Samsung is also expected to limit increasing its DRAM production on the second floor of the first fabrication line in Pyeongtaek, amid the oversupply outlook.

“Samsung was going to add 40,000 wafers to the Pyeongtaek DRAM line, but it is considering 20,000 to 30,000 for the first six months of 2019,” an industry official said.

The Korean chipmaker’s slashed forecasts for fourth-quarter earnings add woes to the negative outlook for 2019.

Local stock brokerages estimate Samsung’s fourth-quarter operating profit to slide to around 13 trillion won from the previous quarter’s record high of 17.57 trillion won, due to weak seasonality of the semiconductor industry at the end of the year.

US-based Micron Technology’s first-quarter earnings announcement for the fiscal year of 2019 that ended on Nov. 31 fueled worries about the upcoming downturn in the chip market.

The market’s third player, after Samsung and SK hynix, reported a 5 percent drop in its revenue quarter-on-quarter, and its CEO announced a cutback in production for the next year.

Market analysts project the memory chip industry to decline for the first six months of 2019 but expect a rebound in the latter half.

“Due to decreased demand for the period between the fourth quarter of 2018 and the first quarter of 2019, memory prices — especially DRAM prices — are estimated to drop by around 15 percent,” said Lee Jae-yoon, an analyst at Yuanta Securities. “But since major chip suppliers are planning to cut back their spending, the oversupply situation is expected to improve in the second half of next year.”