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Less than half a month after the establishment of one of BMW Group’s six global information technology research and development centers, China’s first and only information technology research and development center, and its largest information technology research and development base in Asia in Nanjing, Dassault Systemes (Nanjing) Information Technology Services Co., Ltd. was inaugurated at the 2025 China-France High-End Matching Conference on Digital and Intelligent Manufacturing held in Nanjing on July 30. The industrial software project of Dassault Systemes, a leading global 3D software and innovative design company based in France (hereinafter referred to as “Dassault Systemes”), has been officially launched. In the future, it will build the headquarters of intelligent manufacturing in China.
A license “reflects” the speed of Nanjing
In just 18 months, within one and a half years, we witnessed the implementation of this project in Xuanwu District, Nanjing. This would not have been possible without the government’s support for us. It took less than a month for the enterprise to register, which allowed us to witness a different kind of Chinese speed, Nanjing speed and Xuanwu speed. Xu Shansong, Executive Vice President of Dassault Systemes and President of the Asia-Pacific region, mentioned two “times” in an interview.
Since the signing of the strategic cooperation memorandum between the municipal government and Dassault Systemes at the end of 2023, and the signing of the Dassault Systemes industrial software project in Nanjing in March this year, the Municipal Investment Promotion Bureau and Xuanwu District have carried out joint investment promotion at both the municipal and district levels. The “top leader” takes the lead in investment promotion, and the team provides meticulous and detailed services. The relationship between the city and the enterprise has been continuously “elevated to a new level”.
A relevant official from the Investment Promotion Bureau of Xuanwu District recalled that in order to ensure the project could be implemented in a timely manner, the investment promotion team of Xuzhuang High-tech Zone in Xuanwu District accompanied the enterprise in preparing the review materials and had multiple rounds of communication with the competent authorities. Eventually, the enterprise successfully obtained the business license at 9 p.m. on June 30th.
In response to this, Xu Shansong repeatedly praised, “We originally thought that the registration would take at least three months, but it was completed in less than a month.” He said that with such a pace, the enterprise is confident of continuing to achieve technological catch-up and carve out its own niche in the transformation race. “What we need to do is not limited to Nanjing and Jiangsu, but is aimed at the entire Chinese market for the digital transformation of industrial equipment.”
Even if you bring them in, you still need to make good use of them
To ensure the cybersecurity of small and medium-sized enterprises and help Chinese enterprises further go global, while introducing Dassault Systemes, the Municipal Investment Promotion Bureau also promoted the attraction of China Telecom’s Tianyi Cloud, enabling leading enterprises from both countries to “move forward hand in hand” in Nanjing.
Last year, Tianyi Cloud began to cooperate with Dassault Systemes. With Tianyi Cloud 4.0 as the technical foundation, it carried Dassault Systemes’ Saas-based software platform. Relying on Tianyi Cloud’s extensive coverage of computing power resources and the integration of cloud and intelligence, it better served Dassault Systemes’ Chinese market customers to conveniently access and use it. Hu Zhiqiang, assistant general manager of China Telecom Group and general manager of China Telecom Tianyi Cloud Company, said.
A business license, a “cloud”
A glimpse of the “quality” of Nanjing’s investment environment
PASCAL Daloz, the global CEO of Dassault Systemes, who witnessed the company’s unveiling ceremony in person, said that Nanjing, like Dassault Systemes, has a profound historical heritage and shares a common vision for digitalization and intelligence.
First of all, Nanjing has a solid industrial foundation in aerospace, industrial equipment and other fields. Advanced manufacturing enterprises and industrial clusters are constantly growing, which is of vital importance to our later ecological construction. Secondly, Nanjing is a place where talents gather, with a concentration of universities and over a million college students on campus, providing a huge asset for enterprises to continuously cultivate digital talents for the future. Thirdly, Nanjing has a complete industrial software ecosystem, which enables us to join hands with local partners to develop and expand the industrial ecosystem.
A New Year’s welcome event reveals the “accuracy” of the industry. Both investment promotion and business selection
Why choose Dassault Systemes?
When we attract projects, we focus on three points. First, we concentrate on the direction of the leading industries and promote the integration of advanced manufacturing and modern services. Second, the enterprise’s own industry position and future driving effect; Third, sincerity and opportunities for cooperation.” A relevant official from the Municipal Investment Promotion Bureau said.
International-level industrial cooperation and cross-border project investment promotion originated from Nanjing’s accurate alignment of industrial development
Nanjing, which is currently making every effort to build a “4266” modern industrial system, has four national advanced manufacturing clusters and over ten thousand high-tech enterprises, ranking among the top in the country in terms of quantity. The scale of the software industry has exceeded 860 billion yuan, with industrial software accounting for 40% of the province’s share. 162 leading enterprises have jointly built a complete innovation ecosystem. At the beginning of the year, Nanjing established four industrial breakthrough offices including artificial intelligence (software), mobilizing the entire city’s resources to make breakthroughs in several key industries.
Nanjing, which has always regarded building a strong industrial city as its top priority, has focused on the word “new” to make efforts. It uses advanced manufacturing as a fulcrum to accelerate the development of new quality productive forces, and advanced manufacturing cannot do without industrial software.
Industrial software, known as the “brain” and “nerve”, can integrate the “artificial experience” of enterprises from design, research and development to operation management and production control into the software system in the form of “data intelligence”, optimize the manufacturing process, and enhance production stability and efficiency. The “Implementation Opinions on Accelerating the Development of Industrial Software in Nanjing City” issued last year mentioned that it would support well-known domestic and foreign industrial software enterprises to set up regional headquarters and research and development centers in Nanjing. According to the analysis of Xinhua Guoyan Economics Research Institute, Dassault Systemes’ global market share is approximately 10%, and it has a strong advantage in the field of R&D and design software.
From the “Bird’s Nest” to the “C919 large Passenger Aircraft”, from the “Harmony” and “Fuxing” to the “Coast Guard 160”, behind all these “national business cards” that have shone around the world lies Dassault Systemes’ digital wisdom. In Jiangsu Province, Dassault Systemes has established partnerships with Wuxi Lead Intelligent Equipment, Yangli Group, XCMG Group and others.
The “3DEXPERIENCE platform” is Dassault Systemes’ business and innovation platform, integrating all its product brands and solutions covering 12 industries including automotive and transportation, aerospace and defense, ship and Marine engineering, and industrial equipment.
How “smart” are these plans?
For instance, under the traditional model, if you want to manufacture a car, each link is like an “information island”, and data transmission needs to wait for the model file exported by the previous link and then imported to be obtained. However, based on the unified data source of the platform, different roles can directly obtain the required models and other data, whether it is among different specialties of the design department. Still, departments such as design and simulation, process, and production can all achieve integrated collaboration. Ren Huiliang, a technical advisor for the industrial equipment industry at Dassault Systemes, introduced that during the process verification stage, enterprises can also conduct “virtual assembly” verification on prototypes through virtual simulation verification. “In this way, the cost of physical prototype verification can be reduced and the product launch can be accelerated.”
One choice reflects the expectations of both places. So, what will this global industrial software giant bring to Nanjing?
The project will focus on providing SaaS services, standardized solutions for small and medium-sized enterprises, and customized services for large clients in the field of intelligent manufacturing, and build an integrated service chain covering development, marketing promotion, sales, delivery, and maintenance.
The business direction mainly focuses on intelligent manufacturing, steel, etc. In the future, it will expand to aerospace, biomedicine, etc. Initially, it will focus on Jiangsu, and later radiate throughout the country.
The project plans to build four major sections: the New Industrialization Empowerment Center, the Industry Solution Center, the Industrial Equipment Manufacturing Development Center, and the Excellence Center.
On the morning of July 30th, PASCAL Daloz and his delegation visited Nanjing, and this cooperation was called “Innovation from very beginning”. “Industrial software is the ‘designer’ of manufacturing. Without it, high-quality manufacturing is out of the question. This time, Dassault Systemes’ entry into Nanjing not only brings sales business but also the most advanced technology. The resources of over 200 mature and high-quality industrial partners it possesses will also converge in Nanjing with the establishment of its headquarters.” ” The head of the project’s investment promotion team said, “The introduction of Dassault Systemes has seized one of the key points for the intelligent transformation of the manufacturing industry.”
This year marks the 20th year since Dassault Systemes entered the Chinese market. In Xu Shansong’s view, the unveiling of the Nanjing branch is a milestone for Dassault Systemes – the company’s choice conceals its expectations for the city.
It is understood that Dassault Systemes has signed a strategic cooperation memorandum with Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, planning to jointly establish an outstanding engineer college to deepen the collaborative innovation of “industry-university-research-application”. The company will deeply integrate with the demands of the Chinese market to carry out incremental innovation. In the future, the localization achievements of intellectual property rights will directly empower local leading enterprises such as Nanjing Iron and Steel.
The collaboration between Nanjing and Dassault Systemes stems from the mutual consensus on the future of the industry and is even more deeply rooted in the profound cooperation between Nanjing and France. Since the 1980s, the two sides have opened a chapter of cooperation with an open attitude and forged a deep friendship in the fields of economy and trade, culture, science and technology, etc.
As an important window city for cooperation between China and France, Nanjing has always regarded France as one of the most important partners in Europe. The two sides have built a multi-level and wide-ranging cooperation pattern based on the foundation of “mutual trust, mutual learning and mutual benefit”. By the end of 2024, the city had cumulatively approved and established 112 French investment projects, with contracted foreign capital utilization exceeding 1.5 billion US dollars and actual foreign capital utilization reaching 1.15 billion US dollars. In 2023, the 30 surviving French-funded enterprises achieved a combined operating income of 15.1 billion yuan and paid taxes of 1.41 billion yuan. A number of well-known French enterprises such as Valeo, Air Liquide and Unit have been deeply rooted and developed in Nanjing, becoming the “evergreen trees” of economic and trade cooperation between China and France.
In recent years, economic and trade exchanges between Nanjing and France have become increasingly frequent and close, with high-level interactions and industrial connections continuing to heat up. In November 2023, the Nanjing-Paris Industrial Cooperation and Exchange Conference was successfully held. The following November, the Nanjing-France Economic and Trade Cooperation and Exchange Conference was held, further expanding the space for cooperation between the two sides. A series of high-level interactions have laid a solid foundation for the introduction of landmark foreign investment projects and have become a model for deepening economic and trade cooperation between China and France in Nanjing.
“Investing in Nanjing is investing in the future.”
At the end of the interview, Xu Shansong deliberately added such a sentence
