Capital Support for Innovation in Further Focus

A report from China Daily Dec. 19th, 2025：

Adhering to an innovation-driven approach and accelerating the cultivation and expansion of new growth drivers was identified as one of the key economic tasks for 2026 during the recently convened Central Economic Work Conference.

The conference has emphasized the importance of innovating science and technology-oriented financial services.

It is expected that in the next stage, policies on financial support for technological innovation will place greater thrust on breakthroughs in financial products and service models to address financing bottlenecks faced by technology firms, said Yin Zhentao, deputy director of the National Academy of Economic Strategy at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Yin added that banks may shift their support focus from traditional infrastructure to technology-oriented infrastructure, such as laboratories and innovation platforms.

China's large State-owned commercial banks are studying and deploying measures to implement the guiding principles of the conference, giving priority to financial support for technological innovation.

China Construction Bank said it will fully implement the innovation-driven development strategy by pooling group-wide resources and leveraging synergies between commercial and investment banking, in order to provide targeted and efficient support for the deep integration of technological and industrial innovation.

Bank of Communications said it will seize opportunities arising from the expansion of international science and technology innovation centers, innovate and optimize financial service models, and step up support for the development of new quality productive forces and the building of a modern industrial system in line with local conditions.

To address these challenges, Industrial Bank's Dalian branch tailored an integrated financing solution for the company, aiming to deeply integrate technology finance with green finance. While supporting the company in expanding its production capacity, the solution focuses on technological innovation, breakthroughs in "choke-point" technologies, and green, low-carbon manufacturing.

Lou Feipeng, a researcher at Postal Savings Bank of China, said that banks need to use tools such as intellectual property-backed pledge loans, project financing and equity-debt linked products to cover the financing needs of technology companies from the startup stage through maturity, and to address the challenge of insufficient collateral faced by asset-light enterprises.

"In the future, technology financial services need to evolve from financing toward a 'financing plus advisory' model, providing full lifecycle services for market participants," Lou said.

He added that this should include deeper integration of artificial intelligence and finance, the use of big data to assess corporate creditworthiness and growth prospects, closer coordination among government agencies, venture capital firms and insurance institutions to build a financial service ecosystem, and the use of policy tools such as the re-lending facility for technological innovation to lower corporate financing costs.