Pingtan Taiwan Entrepreneurship Park Unveiled, Creating a Shared Home for Makers

(Taiwan Business News) The Pingtan Taiwan Entrepreneurship Park officially opened on August 15, and will strive to create a shared home for young entrepreneurs from both sides of the Taiwan Strait, with innovation and creativity as its distinguishing feature. A total of 328 Taiwan projects have been registered to move in so far. The Pingtan Taiwan Entrepreneurship Park is located in the Jinjingwan area of the Fujian Pingtan Free Trade Zone. Construction began in May 2012, and the park was completed and delivered for use in August this year. It covers an area of 86,000 sq m, with a total floor area of about 223,000 sq m.

According to Zhu Yun, general manager of Pingtan Free Trade Zone Cross-Strait Development Co., Ltd., the management and operating company of the Pingtan Taiwan Entrepreneurship Park, as of August 15, a total of 328 cross-strait projects had been registered to move into the Taiwan Entrepreneurship Park. Among them, there were 206 Taiwan wholly owned enterprises, Taiwan individual business operators, Taiwan-funded enterprises and Taiwan institutions, and 122 Taiwan association organizations. At present, the approximately 10,000 sq m "makerspace" has been fully furnished and can accommodate 214 youth entrepreneurship groups and individuals at the same time.

Walking into the entrepreneurship park, new buildings rise one after another. In Building No. 3, the reporter met Meng Xianting, general manager of the Cross-Strait Golden Bridge (Fujian) Employment Training Institution, a Taiwan-funded project that moved in on the opening day. This 26-year-old young man from Taiwan said, "Many young people in Taiwan my age want to come to the mainland and try their luck, but they have no way to 'land' because they cannot find suitable channels. We hope to build a 'golden bridge' for cross-strait human resources exchange, training and services, so that young people from both sides can join hands and go international."

The Cross-Strait Golden Bridge, established in 2005, has completed vocational skill assessments for more than 20,000 person-times for Taiwan compatriots. Speaking about moving into Pingtan this time, Meng Xianting said, "Pingtan is currently the 'new special zone' with the most favorable mainland policies toward Taiwan. As long as you take the high-speed ro-ro passenger ship 'Strait', you can reach Pingtan from Taiwan in just over two hours and see the most real mainland. I believe the Taiwan Entrepreneurship Park will become more and more popular, and this place will become a takeoff point for Taiwan youth to soar on the mainland."

The reporter found that the domestic-funded enterprises in the Pingtan Taiwan Entrepreneurship Park are also full of a strong "Taiwan flavor." Huasai Makerspace, which moved into Building No. 3 that day, is an enterprise jointly founded by three partners from Shenzhen, Beijing and Pingtan. One of the founding partners, Peng Xinghua, told the reporter, "'Huasai' means 'making the entrepreneurial dreams of Chinese people on both sides of the strait shine brighter'; it is intended to provide cross-strait entrepreneurial teams with services for 'finding money, finding people, finding markets, and finding users.'"

"We have an office in Taiwan and have also hired Taiwan employees; 40% of project sources come from the Huasai (Taiwan) office and Taiwan entrepreneurship institutions." Peng Xinghua said that the incubator under preparation is dedicated to promoting cross-strait cultural copyright exchange and trading, and the supporting angel investment fund can provide early-stage investment for cross-strait entrepreneurs in Pingtan, boosting the success rate of entrepreneurship.

The Pingtan Taiwan Entrepreneurship Park is planned with four major functional zones, namely the Cross-Strait Youth Entrepreneurship Base, the High-Tech Industry Zone, the Cross-Border E-Commerce Park and Enterprise Headquarters. For example, as a project that moved in that day, the Taiwan Youth Entrepreneurship Space located in Building No. 4 put forward the slogan "Taiwan entrepreneurs can move in with just their bags." In the same building, the Taiwan Universities Industry-University-Research Platform currently has seven Taiwan universities moving in.