A chilly, snow-bound winter's day in Changchun city, capital of Jilin province [Photo/CFP]

Northeast China's Jilin province marked real progress in advancing its innovation capabilities, moving up nine places in the newly released national rankings, according to the China Regional Innovation Capability Evaluation Report 2021.

It is understood that the performance represented the biggest leap yet made in the national rankings and took Jilin to the highest position in the national list of those cities and regions in Northeast China.

The report – jointly released by the Chinese Academy of Science and Technology for Development and the China Innovation and Entrepreneurship Management Research Center at the Chinese Academy of Sciences – is regarded as an authoritative regional innovation evaluation.

The latest edition showed that Jilin's indicators in knowledge creation, knowledge acquisition and enterprise innovation increased substantially.

Of these, government R&D investment increased by 65 percent on the previous year, while the domestic technology transaction value of industrial enterprises above a designated size was 4.2 times that of the previous year. Meanwhile, the amount of foreign technology that was brought in increased by more than 100 times and expenditure on technological transformations increased by more than 14 times.

In recent years, Jilin has reportedly adopted a series of effective measures to increase investment and support for scientific and technological innovation.

Focusing on the development of its pillar industries and strategic emerging industries in the province, Jilin has reportedly initiated the implementation of 28 major scientific and technological projects. These include the efficient use of new energy, scientific and technological innovation of staple crop varieties, the prevention and control of major diseases and innovation of the traditional Chinese medicine and health industries.

Jilin's R&D funding input is widely said to have achieved a major breakthrough, with the total amount last year standing at 15.95 billion yuan ($2.5 billion), an increase of 7.48 percent over the previous year, setting a record.

Currently, there are 2,705 high-tech enterprises across the province, 1,049 "little giant" sci-tech enterprises and 1,360 small and medium-sized sci-tech enterprises in the provincial database.