Shanghai Measures to Support Enterprises in Strengthening Basic Research and Enhancing New Momentum for High-Quality Development (Hufu Bangui [2025] No. 5)

Mechanism

Issued by the Shanghai municipal government's General Office (a full- municipal, not district-level, instrument) the measure layers three subsidy mechanisms aimed at pulling enterprise capital into basic (as opposed to applied/commercialization) research:

• Investment-tiered lump-sum grants: enterprises investing CNY

100m+/year in basic research receive a CNY 10m one-time subsidy; CNY 50m-100m/year investment gets CNY 5m; CNY 10m-50m/year gets CNY 2m.

• Shared-equipment cost-share: 50% reimbursement of scientific

equipment usage fees, capped at CNY 1m/year per enterprise — lowers the fixed-cost barrier to enterprises using national/municipal research infrastructure rather than building redundant in-house facilities.

• Donation tax incentive: a 100% tax deduction for corporate donations

channeled to basic research at nonprofits and universities, intended to route enterprise capital into the academic base-research system Beijing has long flagged as underfunded relative to applied R&D.

The notice explicitly names integrated circuits, biomedicine and artificial intelligence as the industries whose enterprises should be drawn into municipal basic-research decision-making consultations — Shanghai wants leading firms in these three sectors acting as "question-setters, graders and answer-providers" for the city's research agenda, not just funding recipients.

Downstream implications

• Municipal-level layer beneath national basic-research policy: this

sits alongside Shanghai's other 2025 strategic-emerging-industry stack (e.g., the district-level Huangpu translational-medicine subsidy and the municipal advanced-manufacturing transformation plan) as one more piece of Shanghai's push to convert itself into a basic-research hub for China's three flagship "new quality productive forces" sectors.

• Semiconductor angle is indirect but real: integrated circuits is the

first-named priority sector, positioning this alongside China's broader chip self-sufficiency drive even though the instrument itself is sector-neutral R&D-investment matching rather than a chip-specific subsidy line.

• Five-year duration: the 2025-08-01 to 2030-07-31 validity window is

longer than most district-level measures in the register, signalling a standing rather than one-off program.

Open questions

• Aggregate program budget: the notice discloses only per-enterprise

subsidy tiers, not a total municipal appropriation — Shanghai Finance Bureau budget execution reports would be needed for aggregate sizing.

• Named beneficiaries: no company-level grant recipients have been

publicly disclosed yet; watch Shanghai Municipal Science and Technology Commission (stcsm.sh.gov.cn) announcements for the first award lists.