From Research Calls to Innovation Systems: China’s 2026 Opportunities

|China Intelligence Society

How the 15th Five-Year planning cycle is signaling the future of China’s leading city-regions — and why the world should pay attention

This year, we launched China Intelligence Society with a simple but important mission: to offer timely, strategic, and research-based intelligence to scholars, analysts, and institutions around the world seeking to better understand China or engage more effectively with China. At a time when China is often discussed through headlines, assumptions, or fragmented observations, we believe there is an urgent need for a platform that reads China more carefully, more structurally, and more forward-looking.

China’s Fifteenth Five-Year Plan (2026–2030) has now been formally approved, and it makes clear that the next five years are expected to be a decisive period for high-quality development, technological upgrading, digital transformation, regional coordination, social welfare, green transition, and security-resilience capacity. The national outline places particular weight on modern industrial systems, high-level scientific and technological self-reliance, digital China, population quality, green development, and the strengthening of major regional growth poles. It also explicitly calls for consolidating and enhancing the roles of major city-regions such as Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, the Yangtze River Delta, and the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area as strategic engines of national development. For scholars around the world, this is not simply a matter of reading one national document. The more revealing task is to observe how China’s leading regions are already translating national strategic direction into concrete research agendas, commissioned studies, and planning priorities.

Part One: Fifteenth Five-Year preliminary research topics

Over the past two years, local governments in Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, and other major cities have publicly released or initiated Fifteenth Five-Year preliminary research topics. These research calls show where policy experimentation, institutional reform, and strategic investment are likely to intensify first. They therefore offer an unusually valuable early-warning system for academic researchers, policy analysts, think tanks, and international partners seeking to understand China’s next development phase.

1. Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei: from spatial coordination to integrated governance, innovation, and resilience

In Beijing, the publicly released Fifteenth Five-Year preliminary research procurement covered a broad set of strategic topics, including the overall development environment and target indicators, the release of the city’s “Four Centers” potential, deeper interaction among Beijing’s “Five Sons” policy framework, enhancement of Beijing’s international influence, cultural-tourism integration, AI-enabled economic and social development, data development and security, smart-city development, megacity governance, population quality, elderly and child services, employment, social security, housing, and education modernization. This is a strong signal that the capital region is moving beyond basic functional relocation and infrastructure coordination toward a more complex model of capital-region governance, where technological capability, social management, public services, and global influence are being planned together.

Tianjin’s official call for 21 major preliminary research topics is similarly revealing. Its agenda includes determining the guiding principles and indicator systems for the city’s Fifteenth Five-Year development, advancing Chinese modernization in Tianjin, deepening Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei coordination, developing new quality productive forces, deepening reform and opening, modernizing megacity governance, upgrading modern services, strengthening finance for the real economy, expanding the digital economy, advancing rural revitalization, pursuing comprehensive green transition, and promoting high-quality population development. These themes show Tianjin positioning itself not as a passive regional participant but as an active node in a broader northern development architecture combining industry, finance, logistics, governance, and resilience.

Hebei’s officially released preliminary research notices and follow-up summaries indicate concern with major planning questions such as indicator systems, deeper integration into Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei coordination, and other forward-looking structural issues. Although Hebei’s public release is less granular than Beijing’s, the available official material suggests that the province is focusing on how to strengthen its role as a receiver of industrial transfer, a platform for coordinated development, and a partner in innovation-led upgrading rather than remaining a peripheral support zone.

The reason this regional pattern matters is that the national Fifteenth Five-Year Plan explicitly calls for continuing the relief of Beijing’s non-capital functions, building a modern capital metropolitan area, improving the role of Beijing’s sub-center, raising the carrying capacity of Tianjin Binhai New Area, and advancing Xiong’an at a high standard. In other words, the local research agendas are not random; they are policy translation mechanisms that convert national strategy into region-specific governance and development questions.

For the wider world, Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei offers major opportunities for research on metropolitan governance under political centrality, AI and public-sector digitalization, data security and smart-city regulation, regional innovation corridors, and social policy under demographic transition. It is an especially important case for scholars asking how a capital region can pursue innovation, social stability, and regional coordination at the same time.

2. The Yangtze River Delta: from economic density to high-level integration and globally connected innovation

Shanghai’s official announcement of 56 preliminary Fifteenth Five-Year research topics is one of the clearest signals anywhere in China that the Yangtze River Delta is entering a new stage. The city framed the planning cycle as crucial to building momentum toward 2035 and accelerating Shanghai’s development as a globally influential socialist modern international metropolis and as a city of “Five Centers.” That framing indicates that Shanghai sees the Fifteenth Five-Year period not merely as a continuation of growth, but as a period for consolidating global-city functions in finance, shipping, trade, science and technology, and broader international influence.

Around Shanghai, other cities show complementary strategic emphases. In Nanjing, an official research guideline includes the topic of building the city into the principal carrier of a globally influential industrial science-and-technology innovation center. This wording is especially significant because it signals that leading Yangtze River Delta cities are using the Fifteenth Five-Year planning cycle to define their role in a multi-city innovation hierarchy rather than simply competing for general growth. Meanwhile, public materials from Ningbo show attention to target indicators, population trends, and modern industrial-system-related planning, again reinforcing the image of a region trying to align industrial upgrading, governance modernization, and long-term competitiveness.

This aligns closely with the national outline, which calls for improving integrated development mechanisms across innovation chains, industrial chains, infrastructure, and ecological governance in the Yangtze River Delta, accelerating Shanghai’s “Five Centers” agenda, strengthening the Yangtze River Delta Eco-Green Integrated Development Demonstration Zone, enhancing the Hongqiao International Open Hub, and deepening cross-regional cooperation. The implication is that the Yangtze River Delta is being tasked not only with remaining productive, but with becoming a more advanced regional governance platform capable of integrating innovation, openness, sustainability, and institutional coordination at scale.

For international scholars, the Yangtze River Delta provides a rich site for studying regional integration under conditions of high innovation density, the coupling of finance and hard-tech development, open-hub governance, green regionalism, and multi-city innovation systems. It is one of the best places in the world to examine how a state-led but globally connected development model coordinates industrial policy, city-region planning, science and technology upgrading, and ecological transition in one institutional space.

3. The Greater Bay Area: from openness to interoperability, frontier industry policy, and resilient globalization

In the Greater Bay Area, Shenzhen currently offers the clearest public window into the region’s Fifteenth Five-Year research priorities. The Shenzhen Development and Reform Commission has publicly tendered research on building institutional mechanisms that support comprehensive innovation, exploring a high-standard socialist market economy system with Shenzhen characteristics, strengthening industrial and supply-chain resilience and security, and related strategic issues. These topics are highly revealing. They show Shenzhen preparing not only for technological upgrading, but for deeper institutional experimentation in markets, innovation systems, and resilience under external uncertainty.Shenzhen has also moved on more specialized frontier-sector themes linked to the planning cycle, including low-altitude economy development, while the broader logic of its planning work points to efforts to connect innovation, industrial-system modernization, reform, and strategic adaptability. This suggests that Shenzhen is functioning as both a city of advanced manufacturing and an institutional laboratory for future-oriented regulation and growth.

Guangzhou’s public materials are somewhat less detailed at the topic-list level, but the official record clearly shows that the Guangzhou Development and Reform Commission launched procurement intentions for major comprehensive preliminary Fifteenth Five-Year research, and later reported that it had organized thematic investigations, major preliminary studies, and work on the basic planning approach as well as lists of special and regional plans. Budget documents also state that major preliminary research and planning consultation work for the Fifteenth Five-Year Plan were being carried out. Together, these materials indicate that Guangzhou is treating the new cycle as a comprehensive strategic rethinking of industrial systems, medium- and long-term modernization pathways, and planning coordination.

Hong Kong and Macao add an important new layer to the Greater Bay Area story. Unlike Shenzhen and Guangzhou, they do not usually publish mainland-style Fifteenth Five-Year research tenders in the same format. Instead, their 2026 official materials show how they are responding through strategic planning, cross-boundary integration, and innovation-system building. In Hong Kong, the government has explicitly linked the Northern Metropolis to alignment with the national Fifteenth Five-Year Plan, while the 2026–27 Budget highlights the Hetao Shenzhen-Hong Kong Science and Technology Innovation Co-operation Zone, San Tin Technopole, and the goal of fostering new quality productive forces. Together, these signals show that Hong Kong is being positioned not only as an international financial and services centre, but also as a cross-boundary innovation and technology platform within the Greater Bay Area.

Macao is moving in a different but complementary direction. In 2026, the Macao SAR Government made clear that it is preparing its Third Five-Year Plan for Economic and Social Development (2026–2030) in close alignment with the national Fifteenth Five-Year Plan, with strong emphasis on reform, diversification, and better integration with Hengqin. Official policy materials also show support for sectors beyond gaming, including culture and tourism, higher education, healthcare, new and high technology, modern finance, and green development through the Environmental Protection Plan for Macao (2026–2030). This means that while Hong Kong contributes international connectivity and institutional interoperability, Macao contributes diversification, Hengqin-linked restructuring, and sustainability-oriented transformation. Together with Shenzhen and Guangzhou, they show that the Greater Bay Area is becoming a multi-system regional platform shaped by innovation, coordination, and resilient globalization.

At the national level, the Fifteenth Five-Year Plan places special emphasis on deepening the construction of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area and improving the alignment of rules, mechanisms, and legal safeguards in areas such as innovation, economic development, and public services. That language helps explain why Shenzhen’s agenda is so institutionally oriented. The Greater Bay Area is not only about growth; it is about whether China can create a globally competitive and technologically advanced region that also manages cross-jurisdictional coordination, rule alignment, supply-chain resilience, and future-industry scaling.

A strong pattern is already visible: 2026 government-backed research calls across Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, the Yangtze River Delta, and the Greater Bay Area, are clustering around three functions rather than one: building translational infrastructure, steering frontier-sector R&D, and commissioning governance-oriented research that can directly feed policy and industrial strategy.

Part Two: Building Regional Innovation Systems: China’s 2026 Research Calls

1) Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei: strategic science, translational platforms, and cross-provincial hard-tech coordination

The region’s clearest 2026 signal is coordinated hard-tech mission setting.
The Beijing-led notice for the 2026 Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei Natural Science Fund Cooperation Special says the scheme exists to solve shared foundational scientific problems across the three places and to strengthen the Beijing (BTH) international science-and-technology innovation centre. For 2026, it explicitly solicits guide proposals from Beijing, Tianjin, and Hebei in two sectoral clusters: hydrogen and biomedicine. The notice names concrete directions such as electrolysis hydrogen production, hydrogen storage and transport materials, hydrogen fueling-system reliability, CAR-T/TCR-T, brain–computer interfaces, organoids and organ-on-chip, AI-enabled drug discovery, RNA therapeutics, biomedical materials, medical imaging, and surgical robots. It also requires the topic design to be open enough for joint applications by project leaders across the three places.

Beijing itself is pairing that regional science agenda with stronger translational infrastructure.
The 2026 Beijing pilot-scale / intermediate-testing platform notice covers AI, biomedicine and health, green and low-carbon development, robotics and intelligent manufacturing, new-generation information technology, intelligent connected new-energy vehicles, new materials, integrated circuits, aerospace, safety and emergency technologies, future industries, and the integration of advanced manufacturing with modern services. The city frames these projects explicitly as a way to accelerate the landing of pilot platforms and deepen the fusion of scientific innovation and industrial innovation.

Beijing is also making laboratory formation more cross-sector and more enterprise-led.
The 2026 Beijing Key Laboratory call says Beijing key labs are to be built on the basis of entities in the municipality, including enterprises, universities, research institutes, and medical/health institutions. The 2026 guidance says Beijing will prioritise enterprise-led labs, encourage universities and institutes to participate in joint construction, cap co-builders at four, and even provides a workflow where the legal-entity host creates personal application accounts for team members. That is a strong signal that the city wants labs to operate as organised innovation coalitions, not only as internal academic units.

Tianjin’s 2026 notices point to “AI+” application-led mission design.
Tianjin’s notice soliciting guide proposals for the 2026 Tianjin AI major science-and-technology special says submissions must be made in the name of an organisation, not as an unattached individual, but it also says there is no restriction on organisation type and that universities may apply at school/department level. The listed “AI+” application domains include research, manufacturing, education, health care, elder care, transport, urban governance, and culture-tourism.

Hebei’s 2026 project design is especially explicit about university–enterprise coupling and scenario-based industrialisation.
In the 2026 central-guided local science-development-fund projects, Hebei requires that when an innovation base is hosted by a university or research institute, it must apply jointly with an enterprise. In the same notice, Hebei’s Xiong’an scenario-based commercialisation and technical-attack projects must be enterprise-led, and cluster commercialisation projects must apply jointly with upstream and downstream firms and establish a “co-invest, co-research, co-share” mechanism. The same document also supports cross-regional technology cooperation by Hebei universities, institutes, and firms with western support regions.

There are also direct individual-facing channels, but mainly in talent and academic-development formats.
Beijing’s education-science planning call offers multiple categories, including youth tracks, and sets applicant qualifications for individual researchers. Beijing’s 2026 postdoctoral funding notice funds host units, internationalised postdoc recruitment, and individual postdocs’ research activities, especially where projects align with Beijing’s socio-economic priorities.

What this means.
BTH is the most clearly mission-oriented of the three regions. Its 2026 architecture ties together cross-provincial basic science, pilot-scale testing, enterprise-led lab building, AI application agendas, and scenario-based industrialisation. The region is trying to solve the classic fragmentation problem between fundamental research, translational infrastructure, and industrial demand. Beijing’s own 2026 policy interpretation reinforces that direction by saying the BTH natural-science cooperation special will support about 60 projects and by coupling it to industrial collaboration and factor-market reforms.

2) Yangtze River Delta: the broadest thematic portfolio, from industrial collaboration to policy intelligence and science communication

Shanghai stands out for the scale of its policy-research commissioning system.
The Shanghai Development Research Center’s 2026 pages show a dense ecosystem of special-topic calls: market regulation, SOE reform, metropolitan planning, Pudong, talent, civil affairs, water and marine affairs, health, government rule of law, agriculture, ecology, women’s development, veterans’ affairs, and more. The center states that these are publicly solicited from society-facing research teams, and its 2026 major-call cycle drew 630 valid applications for 35 major topics. This is not a marginal policy-consulting scheme; it is a large public demand system for applied research.

The Shanghai topic mix shows how wide “research” now is in the YRD policy imagination.
Examples from the 2026 topic menus include: latest talent-policy trends in major countries and global talent-centre cities; self-media-era civil-affairs communication; standards for non-pharmacological interventions in dementia-friendly communities; digital-economy industrial linkages and digital-real integration; pathways for Shanghai to optimise full-chain legal guarantees for technology transfer; mechanisms for research teams to morph into entrepreneurial teams in Pudong; and global-supply-chain-centre building via Waigaoqiao. Together, these topics push beyond hard science into institutional design, social governance, talent competition, platform governance, and entrepreneurship systems.

Shanghai is also backing frontier-facing science communication as part of innovation policy.
The Shanghai STCSM 2026 “Science Popularisation and Science Communication” call is unusually strategic. It funds work on future-industry science communication in cell and gene therapy, brain–computer interfaces, and quantum, and says eligible applicants vary by subfield but include universities, research institutes, and tertiary hospitals. It also funds science-IP marketisation, public-facing communication of Shanghai’s science progress, and science–art collaboration. This is a strong sign that Shanghai sees public legitimacy, cultural translation, and science communication as part of the innovation system itself.

Zhejiang shows a different YRD logic: rule-making and co-funded basic research.
The 2026 Zhejiang IP soft-science programme focuses on frontier rule questions such as AI-related IP protection and standard-essential patents, with 12 topic categories and 58 key directions. It also creates a dedicated youth track (“Qingmiao”) that allows under-40 personnel from universities, research institutes, and enterprises to lead proposals. In parallel, Zhejiang’s 2026 provincial natural-science-fund cycle uses multiple joint funds backed by firms, laboratories, and city governments, including Huadong Medicine, Mindray, Baimahu Laboratory, Hangzhou, Jinhua, Lishui, Quzhou, and Jiaxing.

Anhui’s 2026 notices show a strong enterprise-led collaborative-innovation model.
The Anhui industry-and-information notices say 2026 industry-chain collaborative-innovation projects should be led by enterprises, with upstream/downstream firms plus universities and research institutes forming innovation consortia. A related 2026 service-oriented-manufacturing collaborative-innovation notice explicitly encourages chain-leading firms, single champions, and “little giant” specialised SMEs to organise joint attacks with universities and institutes. Anhui also lists a 2026 AI scene-innovation project call on its science-department notices page, reinforcing the region’s orientation toward application and deployment.

What this means.
Among the three regions, the YRD has the widest research portfolio. It is not only building hard-tech and industrial collaboration; it is also institutionalising policy intelligence, urban governance research, legal/institutional studies, care and ageing research, entrepreneurial transformation, and science communication. The YRD model is less singularly mission-driven than BTH and less exclusively cross-border-commercialisation-driven than the GBA. It is the most diversified knowledge-governance ecosystem of the three.

3) Greater Bay Area: enterprise-led R&D, cross-border funding, and commercialization-first institutional design

At the provincial level, Guangdong’s R&D architecture is explicitly multi-actor but operationally enterprise-oriented.
A representative Guangdong 2025–2026 key R&D plan notice says lead applicants may be enterprises, research institutes, universities, other public institutions, and industry organisations with legal-person status in the province. It also requires real task-sharing among collaborators, pushes strong self-financing ratios, and stresses industry–academia–research integration. This is a useful proxy for how Guangdong structures major R&D participation: broad formal eligibility, but demanding consortial organisation and strong implementation capacity.

Shenzhen’s 2026 technology-plan calendar is the clearest GBA map of upcoming participation windows.
The 2026 Shenzhen schedule includes basic-research general, key, and youth projects; a science-strategy-research track; Shenzhen–Hong Kong joint funding; Shenzhen–Hong Kong–Macao C-category projects; city and provincial key-lab support; concept-verification centres; pilot/test bases; key-industry R&D plans; industrialisation of national major S&T projects; small-micro-enterprise technology-innovation projects; tech-transfer and contract support; youth innovation and entrepreneurship projects; and a Shenzhen–Singapore joint R&D programme. Shenzhen is effectively publishing a full-stack innovation calendar, from discovery to validation, transfer, industrialisation, and entrepreneurship.

Qianhai is using think-tank funding to turn research itself into a development instrument.
The 2026 Qianhai think-tank development special fund supports completed research commissioned by national ministries, Guangdong, Shenzhen, the Qianhai authority, or Hong Kong SAR government departments, and reimburses 30 per cent of actual contract value after completion. It also rewards books and academic outputs connected to the GBA, Shenzhen’s demonstration-zone role, and Qianhai development. This is unusually direct state support for policy research as regional-development infrastructure.

Hong Kong contributes a dense cross-border funding toolkit rather than one single annual call.
The Mainland–Hong Kong Technology Cooperation Funding Scheme supports collaborative R&D among universities, research institutes, and technology enterprises on both sides. The RAISe+ Scheme is aimed at local universities’ transformation and commercialisation of R&D outcomes while incentivising collaboration among government, industry, academic, and research sectors. The Enterprise Support Scheme funds in-house R&D by local companies. The Research Talent Hub for Technology Companies helps firms hiring research talent, and the Frontier Technology Research Support Scheme supports UGC-funded universities in attracting top global researchers and buying facilities for frontier projects. Hong Kong therefore adds both cross-border collaboration capacity and commercialisation / talent-market infrastructure to the GBA mix.

Macao’s 2026 system is unusually explicit about industry–academia matching.
FDCT’s Funding Scheme for Innovation and Research of Enterprises says it is designed to support technology enterprises at different stages, encourage industry–academia–research collaboration, and promote transformation of applied research results. For the matching category, projects must be successfully matched with a tertiary institution through the Industry–Academia–Research Matching Platform, with application windows in January, April, August, and October 2026. The scheme gives priority to cooperation with Macao tertiary institutions and Hengqin enterprises and names sectors such as TCM, integrated circuits, IoT, big data, AI, new energy, space science, advanced materials, and biomedicine. FDCT’s 2026 platform-funding scheme also allows applicants from public and private higher-education institutions, non-profit entities, and commercial enterprises, and its timetable includes 2026 windows for basic research, applied research, demand-driven research, key R&D, enterprise R&D, and joint international funding, including with Guangdong.

What this means.
The GBA has the strongest commercialisation and cross-border flavour of the three regions. Guangdong and Shenzhen emphasise consortia, pilot/test infrastructure, technology transfer, and enterprise participation; Hong Kong adds strong commercialisation, talent, and cross-border R&D schemes; Macao adds matching-platform logic and explicit university–enterprise pairing. The result is a regional system that is less about one city funding isolated projects and more about building a cross-jurisdictional research market.

Comparative takeaways

BTH is the most mission-driven and strategic-sector focused. It is trying to synchronise basic science, pilot platforms, key labs, and scenario-based industrialisation around a narrower set of frontier priorities such as hydrogen, AI, biomedicine, and advanced equipment.

The YRD is the most thematically diversified. It spans industrial collaboration, legal-institutional design, talent policy, SOE reform, digital governance, social care, science communication, and entrepreneurship. It looks like the broadest public marketplace for policy-relevant research.

The GBA is the most cross-border and commercialization-first. It is the region where research calls most clearly blend university science, firm-led development, technology transfer, international collaboration, and platformised matching across Guangdong, Shenzhen, Hong Kong, Macao, and Hengqin.

On participation design, the three regions are converging on a common formula.
Hard-tech calls are mostly institution-led and often prefer or require enterprise leadership or university–enterprise joint application; more room for named individuals appears in postdoc schemes, youth tracks, education-science calls, and application systems where an individual applicant works through a registered host unit.

What international scholars should study next

1. The “missing middle” of innovation: concept verification, pilot testing, and scenario-based commercialization.
BTH and Shenzhen both show that governments are increasingly investing in the difficult middle stage between lab discovery and market scale-up. Comparative work here would be valuable for Europe, North America, the Gulf, and Southeast Asia, where translational bottlenecks remain common.

2. Enterprise-led versus university-led research governance.
Beijing key labs, Hebei’s joint-application rules, Anhui’s industry-chain consortia, and Guangdong’s key-R&D plans all suggest a shift from university autonomy alone toward mixed governance with stronger enterprise leadership. Scholars should compare whether this produces faster translation, different topic selection, or new risks for academic independence.

3. Cross-border research governance inside the GBA.
The GBA is now one of the best real-world laboratories for studying how different legal, funding, and institutional systems try to collaborate across borders while keeping research, talent, IP, and commercialisation moving. This is especially relevant for scholars of regional integration, innovation diplomacy, and multi-level governance.

4. Policy research as infrastructure.
Shanghai’s decision-consulting system and Qianhai’s think-tank fund show that governments are increasingly treating applied policy research as part of state capacity rather than as a peripheral advisory activity. International scholars should study commissioning systems, evaluation processes, uptake mechanisms, and how “policy intelligence” becomes institutionalised.

5. Frontier-industry legitimacy and science communication.
Shanghai’s science-communication call is a reminder that cell and gene therapy, BCI, quantum, and other frontier sectors require public understanding and social legitimacy, not only technical performance. This is an under-researched bridge between innovation studies, communication, ethics, and industrial strategy.

6. Youth and talent pipelines inside mission-oriented innovation systems.
The most interesting “individual participation” channels are not random open calls; they are structured routes for postdocs, youth-track applicants, university applicants, and research-talent recruitment. International scholars should examine how these mechanisms reshape career trajectories, mobility, and regional talent retention.

Part Three: Opportunities for Global Experts and International Organizations

The 2026 Shanghai Sci-tech Co-research Program is explicitly addressed to “young scientists worldwide and relevant organizations.” It lets a Shanghai host invite a foreign national as principal investigator if that person has a PhD in natural sciences or engineering, is under 45, holds a formal teaching/research post at an overseas university, research institute, or corporate R&D department, and spends at least 6 months in Shanghai during the project. Applications run in batches through 31 December 2026, and the grant is RMB 400,000 per project.

For foreign organizations, the strongest formally stated route is in Macao. FDCT’s 2026 International Collaborative Research scheme funds Macao recipients working with eligible foreign organizations, up to MOP 5 million. The foreign partner can be a top-200 university in Times/QS/US News/ARWU, a top-100 university by discipline, a Fortune 500 foreign enterprise, or a higher-education institution, research institute, or business enterprise from a Portuguese-speaking country participating in the Macao forum framework. The scheme requires a cooperation agreement, reciprocal research visits, at least two working meetings per year, and allows partner-side costs up to 40% of the funding.

For the Greater Bay Area more broadly, Hong Kong is the most practical gateway for overseas institutions. The Mainland-Hong Kong Technology Cooperation Funding Scheme (MHKTCFS) supports collaboration among universities, research institutes, and technology enterprises in Hong Kong and the Mainland, including categories jointly funded with Guangdong and Shenzhen. Applications must be submitted simultaneously by the Hong Kong and Mainland organizations, and the Hong Kong lead must be a local R&D Centre or designated public research institute. Hong Kong also runs the Frontier Technology Research Support Scheme (FTRSS), which funds UGC universities to attract international top-notch researchers and buy facilities for frontier-tech projects; joint applications with other supporting parties are allowed so long as a UGC-funded university is the lead.

There are also meaningful indirect routes for foreign companies and experts through foreign-funded R&D centers. In Shanghai, the city’s 2026 package of 26 measures says foreign-funded R&D centers will get more support for basic research investment, technology commercialization, and R&D-manufacturing integration, and it explicitly says Shanghai will support their participation in government research projects and collaboration with universities and research institutes. In Beijing, accredited foreign-funded R&D centers can receive support to undertake or lead municipal technological tasks, may become responsible institutions for the Beijing Natural Science Foundation if they have legal-person status, and can have their technical staff enter the city’s expert pool. Beijing also offers visa, customs, tax, and talent-support benefits for such centers and the foreign experts they employ or invite.

For foreign firms that already have, or are willing to build, a Hong Kong footprint, there are additional operational schemes rather than classic research grants. Hong Kong’s Research Talent Hub for Technology Companies supports companies conducting or planning R&D in Hong Kong to hire research talent; the talent can hold degrees from well-recognized non-local institutions, provided they are legally allowed to work in Hong Kong. The Public Sector Trial Scheme then helps fund prototypes and trials for Hong Kong R&D companies.

In the flagship mainland 2026 hard-tech calls reviewed for Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei and much of the Yangtze River Delta, the safest reading is that direct offshore application by a foreign university or company is still uncommon. The dominant design is: a Shanghai-registered host, a Beijing-accredited foreign-funded R&D center, a Hong Kong local lead, or a Macao legal recipient partners with the foreign expert or organization. In other words, foreign participation is very real, but it is usually host-mediated, not purely open-border.

First, Shenzhen’s 2026 service guide lists planned windows for Shenzhen–Hong Kong joint funding projects and Shenzhen–Hong Kong–Macao C-class projects, which are worth watching if you want to enter through GBA cross-border channels. Secondly, Shenzhen’s science bureau forwarded the Ministry of Science and Technology notice collecting 2026 proposals for the International Distinguished Young Scientists program. That suggests Shenzhen is actively plugged into national foreign-talent channels, but the detailed eligibility sits in the underlying guides rather than in the short municipal notice.

The bottom-line summary is this:

Best option for an individual foreign scholar: Shanghai’s Sci-tech Co-research Program.

Best option for a foreign university or Fortune 500 firm: Macao FDCT International Collaborative Research.

Best option for a foreign institution wanting a large cross-border R&D pathway: Hong Kong’s MHKTCFS and FTRSS.

Best option for a multinational already operating in mainland China: Shanghai or Beijing foreign-funded R&D center channels to enter local government projects and collaborations.