Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (2nd L) visits the Laboratory of Advanced Materials & Electron Microscopy at the Institute of Physics of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in Beijing, capital of China, May 7, 2015. Li made an inspection tour Thursday at CAS and in Zhongguancun, Beijing's high-tech business hub. (Xinhua/Ding Lin)
Pictures of Premier Li Keqiang holding a cup of freshly-brewed coffee and chatting with young crowds at a start-up cluster in northwestern Beijing went viral online on Thursday, sending another heartening message to China's budding entrepreneurs.
In a visit to 3W Coffee, a cafe frequented by young IT engineers for seminars and brainstorming sessions at Zhongguancun, a technology hub dubbed as China's Silicon Valley, Li listened to youngsters' ideas and stories, and encouraged them in a fresh demonstration of support for entrepreneurship and innovation.
After hearing how job-listings website Lagou.com has helped over 1 million IT workers land jobs, Li said the aim of stable growth is to ensure employment, and innovation has served as an important tool for that end.
He called for further efforts to create conditions to allow the flowering of such innovation.
"As China is upgrading its growth mode, your stories of striving for success will inspire an innovation-driven and knowledge-based economy," Li said, demanding more moves to eliminate barriers to making innovation a new trend and bringing out the creativity of masses.
In his visit to Legendstar, a training center that has churned out over 600 CEOs for high-tech start-up firms, Li called for more such programs to facilitate start-ups' growth.
He said the tide of start-ups offered rare opportunities for the masses, and the government should provide more favorable policies to encourage them.
Thursday's activity is the latest official trumpeting of innovation and entrepreneurship. Just a few days ago, Li lauded the younger generation's spirit of entrepreneurship in a letter to students at Tsinghua University on Youth Day.
He called on the students to nurture their pioneering spirit and to dare to break down routine to facilitate innovative and entrepreneurial progress.
The repeated emphasis on innovation came as China's growth slowed to 7 percent year on year in the first quarter, the lowest quarterly growth rate since 2009. However, young entrepreneurs are behind a wave of startups that has become an economic bright spot.
According to official data, the number of newly registered firms in China in Q1 rose by nearly 40 percent from Q1 of 2014.
And the government is pinning hopes on the trend to help generate jobs and steady growth as nearly 80 percent of urban jobs are in small companies.
For that end, the government has come up with a series of support policies. In January, China created a 40-billion-yuan venture capital fund to help innovative firms in their early stages, especially in emerging industries.
And last week, the State Council, China's cabinet, offered tax breaks to innovative startups and secured loans of up to 100,000 yuan (16,000 U.S. dollars) for small firms. It promised to use fiscal revenues to help cover the interest.
Analysts have predicted that the government funding will attract private investors to bet on start-ups, with hundreds of billions of yuan likely to come flooding in.
In a guideline released on Wednesday on e-commerce development, the government pledged to study policies encouraging qualified Internet businesses to pursue domestic stock market listings.
