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At the 2026 Third “Tech-Industry-Finance Coordinated Development Forum,” Tu Guangshao, former Standing Committee member of the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee and former Executive Vice Mayor of the Shanghai Municipal Government, argued that China does not lack funds—what it lacks is tech capital capable of bearing risk, investing for the long term, and empowering enterprises. He said the global economy has entered an “era of tech capital.” Citing artificial intelligence as an example, he noted that the AI race is fundamentally a contest of capital strength, and that short-term opportunistic money cannot bridge the gap between massive long-term investment and delayed returns. To this end, he proposed a “Six Ones” framework covering a new perspective, key points of tech capital, the enterprise growth chain, industry coverage, an ecosystem network, and an integration system. He also recommended addressing shortcomings in capital formation, circulation, and exit—namely insufficient diversity of participants and overly narrow channels—to drive deep integration of the technology chain, industrial chain, and capital chain.
Key Elements
“China actually doesn’t lack money—what it lacks is tech capital.” Speaking at the 2026 Third “Tech-Industry-Finance Coordinated Development Forum” held on October 23, Tu Guangshao, former Standing Committee member of the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee and former Executive Vice Mayor of the Shanghai Municipal Government, delivered a keynote speech titled “The ‘Six Ones’ Framework and the Development of Tech Finance,” systematically laying out the path for tech finance to serve technological innovation and proposing a framework to shore up shortcomings from six dimensions. The forum was hosted by International Finance News, with think-tank support from the Xi Jinping Economic Thought Research Institute at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics and the Shanghai Institute for Science of Science.
Tu said high-quality development is a long-term task, and leading new development through technological innovation is inseparable from the effective linkage of technology, industry, and finance. Tech finance is listed first among finance’s “five major articles,” and building its system is a complex, systematic undertaking. His solution is the “Six Ones”: focus on a new perspective, break through a key point, strengthen a growth chain, expand a coverage area, weave an ecosystem network, and build an integration system.
Tech Capital Is a Core Strategic Resource
In Tu’s view, technological innovation leading the development of new quality productive forces is forcing the economic system to shift from traditional resource-driven growth to innovation-driven growth. This transformation touches resource allocation, service models, organizational systems, risk management, and personnel structure, and it also drives change within tech finance itself. The means of production, asset forms, industry formats, and risk characteristics on which tech companies rely differ markedly from those of traditional enterprises. Financial methods built for serving traditional industries are hard to adapt; without new concepts and methods, tech finance practice will struggle to get off the ground.
He called tech capital the core strategic resource within the tech finance system and judged that the global economy has formally entered an “era of tech capital.” The banking system, dominated by indirect financing, has ample liquidity, but these funds differ in nature from the capital that technological innovation requires: innovation needs capital that can bear risk, invest for the long term, and empower enterprise growth—namely venture capital, long-term capital, patient capital, and “smart capital.”
Taking artificial intelligence as an example, Tu analyzed that behind the global AI innovation competition is, in essence, competition in tech finance and capital strength. AI development currently faces two challenges: first, it requires sustained, long-term, massive capital investment rather than short-term opportunistic money; second, there is a time lag in converting AI technological innovation into commercial returns, creating a gap between long-term investment and investment returns. If capital matching is insufficient, technological development may lose momentum.
He noted that venture capital, patient capital, and similar concepts have in recent years been written into important national-level deployments, including the thinking behind the 15th Five-Year Plan. Progress has been made in tech capital development, but shortcomings remain, including insufficient diversity of participants and relatively narrow channels. China needs to proceed from the strategic height of technological innovation, shore up shortcomings in key links such as capital formation, circulation, and exit, and build a full-chain, multi-tiered tech capital ecosystem. One important task of the Shanghai International Financial Center is to play a hub role and promote the conversion of social capital into high-quality tech capital—”not just a matter of quantity, but even more a matter of quality.”
Growth Chain and Coverage: Financing Cannot Be Interrupted
Tu pointed out that the growth of sci-tech innovation enterprises is not a straight line but a non-linear evolution curve, with funding needs and risk characteristics changing dynamically by stage. He cited three key stages to illustrate:
| Growth Stage | Corresponding Link | Risk and Funding Characteristics |
|---|---|---|
| “Valley of Death” | Lab validation | Technical feasibility undetermined; funding needs relatively limited |
| “Darwinian Sea” | From prototype to scale-up | High failure rate in crossing; requires relay of venture capital |
| “Darwinian Sea” | From mass production to marketization | Fierce competition; requires scaled capital and industrial resources |
Note: Stage divisions are based on Tu Guangshao’s speech at the forum.
He believes the current financing system has gaps between these stages, which is also a key bottleneck in the growth of sci-tech innovation enterprises and the commercialization of technological achievements. Tech finance needs to provide a complete chain that accompanies enterprises through their entire life cycle, avoiding interruptions in financing.
On coverage, Tu stressed that technological innovation is not limited to specific high-tech industries but covers the entire modern industrial system. Under the thinking of the 15th Five-Year Plan, the modern industrial system is divided into traditional industries, strategic emerging industries, and future industries, with corresponding tasks of transformation and upgrading, development and expansion, and accelerated layout, respectively. This division does not conflict with the traditional classification of primary, secondary, and tertiary industries; the latter divides by industry category, while the former emphasizes the impact of technology and innovation on industry. At present, strategic emerging industries account for about 20%, future industries are just getting started, and traditional industries still account for a very high share.
The three types of industries have different innovation characteristics: future industries focus on original innovation, strategic emerging industries on diffusion, and traditional industries on application. Financial resource allocation should also differ accordingly, building a financing system that is categorized and adapted with shared risk based on the innovation models and risk-return characteristics of different industries. Government funds, policy-based finance, and commercial finance need to work in coordination.
Ecosystem and Integration: No “Going It Alone”
Tu said tech finance cannot “advance as a single force”; only by forming an ecosystem can it be sustainable. This requires integrating diverse participants such as banks, securities firms, insurers, and venture capital to build a multi-tiered, full-coverage collaborative network and achieve efficient resource interchange. The ecosystem also involves tech information sharing, talent connections, tech credit evaluation, intellectual property valuation, technology trading markets, as well as risk-sharing mechanisms and tax policies and other safeguards—encompassing both horizontal industrial integration and vertical service integration.
He believes the integration of technology and finance is not simple splicing but requires breaking down industry barriers to form a two-way cycle in which “technology empowers finance and finance nourishes technology.” Technological innovation methods, models, and structures—including computing power, algorithms, and hardware in the AI field—are iterating rapidly. Innovation approaches are moving from single to complex, from linear to non-linear, from flat to three-dimensional, and showing a trend of cross-boundary integration. The financial system needs to be able to identify, adapt to, and clearly see these changes—”it cannot just wait by a stump for a hare” and respond to all changes with no change.
Tu concluded that the core of developing tech finance is to tightly grasp the main thread of technological innovation, ultimately achieving deep integration and coordinated development of the technology chain, industrial chain, and capital chain.
From a market-impact perspective, these remarks continue the attention of regulators and policy circles to the structural problem of an excessively high share of indirect financing and insufficient supply of long-term capital. If shortcomings in capital formation, circulation, and exit are addressed more quickly, funding sources for the venture capital and private equity markets are expected to become more diversified, and the ways in which bank-affiliated capital participates in technological innovation may also adjust accordingly. For long-cycle, high-investment tracks such as artificial intelligence, whether patient capital matching the pace of R&D can be obtained will directly affect the speed of technology conversion and industrialization.
