BEIJING — China’s national high-tech zones have played an important role in the country’s innovation-driven development in the past 30 years, Minister of Science and Technology Wang Zhigang said on Dec 26.

High-tech zones, of which there are a total of 168, have become an important growth engine for China’s economic development, Wang said in Beijing at a symposium on the 30th anniversary of the high-tech zones.

In 2017, high-tech zones gathered 52,000 high-tech enterprises, 38.2 percent of the country’s total. The revenue of high-tech zones reached 30.7 trillion yuan (about $4.46 trillion), and the GDP reached 9.52 trillion yuan, representing 11.5 percent of the national GDP.

The total export volume of enterprises in the zones reached $478 billion in 2017, nearly 20 percent of the nation’s total export of goods and services.

With the improved business environment, high-tech zones have seen increasing popularity.

High-tech zones should take the lead in innovation-driven and high-quality development, making more breakthroughs in core technologies, Wang said.