In the era of the "twin stars" in central China, Henan quietly enters the game.

Represented by YMTC in Wuhan, Hubei, and CXMT in Hefei, Anhui, the capital market in central China has been extremely active recently.

Against the backdrop of the remarkable performance of the "two storage giants" in central China, there is also Henan, which has been quietly making efforts. On May 19, Luoyang Bearing Group Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Luozhou Bearing Co., Ltd.") applied for IPO on the ChiNext of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange and successfully passed the review by the listing review committee. One day earlier, Jiachen Intelligence and Tianhai Electronics were listed on the A-share market on the same day, being listed on the Beijing Stock Exchange and the Shenzhen Stock Exchange respectively.

Together with Shenglong Co., Ltd., which was listed on the main board of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in March, and Haichang Intelligence, which was listed on the Beijing Stock Exchange in April, the "Henan sector" in the capital market continues to expand, and the total number of listed companies has increased to 117. Once Luozhou Bearing Co., Ltd. is listed, Henan is expected to add one more listed company.

However, on the other side of the quantitative growth, there is a reflection on the "quality". Since the beginning of this year, the growth rate of the total market value of Henan's listed companies has been lower than the national average and far lower than that of Hubei. Looking back over a longer period, during the 14th Five-Year Plan period, the total market value of Henan's listed companies was surpassed by Hubei, and the gap with Anhui has further widened.

This forces Henan to face up to the shortcomings of a relatively high proportion of traditional industries and insufficient visibility of emerging sectors. The real protagonist in the capital market always belongs to hard technology. When the outside world focuses on the scientific and technological breakthroughs of the "two storage giants" in central China, what can Henan bring to the "table"?

Boom

As the "province with the largest economy in central China", Henan's performance in the capital market shows an obvious misalignment.

At the end of the 13th Five-Year Plan, there were 89 A-share listed companies in Henan, less than those in Anhui (126) and Hubei (114), ranking third in central China. By the end of the 14th Five-Year Plan, the number increased to 113, and the overall growth rate was also lower than that of Anhui (185) and Hubei (152).

It has become an urgent task for Henan to promote the listing of more high-quality enterprises as soon as possible.

As early as 2022, the "Implementation Plan for the Five - Year Doubling Action to Promote Enterprise Listing in Henan Province" was released, finalizing the top - level design of Henan's listing cultivation system. The plan clearly states that within five years starting from 2022, it aims to add an average of 20 domestic and foreign listed companies annually and promote the steady improvement of the scale, level, and functions of the province's multi - level capital market.

Following the guidance of "growing from small to large - scale enterprises, transforming large - scale enterprises into joint - stock companies, and listing joint - stock companies" in the above - mentioned plan, Henan systematically promoted the joint - stock reform of industrial enterprises in 2023, and promoted large - scale industrial enterprises in the province with prominent main businesses, strong profitability, and great development potential to be included in the reform as much as possible.

Since 2024, the local area has further taken the listing of technology - based enterprises as the core breakthrough direction. At the end of last year, the "Special Action Plan for Improving the Quality and Efficiency of Science and Technology Finance in Henan Province" was officially introduced, guiding financial capital to invest in early - stage, small - scale, long - term, and hard - technology projects.

The Beijing Stock Exchange has become an important channel for Henan's "specialized, refined, distinctive, and innovative" enterprises to connect with the capital market. With the addition of Haichang Intelligence and Jiachen Intelligence this year, the number of listed companies on the Beijing Stock Exchange in Henan has expanded to 15, ranking first in central China.

Overall, as of now, Henan has added 4 A - share listed companies this year, ranking fourth in the country, only after the three eastern economic powerhouses of Zhejiang (12), Jiangsu (11), and Guangdong (6), and on a par with Anhui and Shandong.

It is not difficult to find that Henan's current boom in listing is deeply linked to the development of the local automobile industry.

Among the 4 companies that went public intensively, 3 are in the upstream and downstream of the automobile industry: Jiachen Intelligence focuses on the field of industrial automation control, and its core products include Internet - of - Vehicles products and applications; Tianhai Electronics is the leading domestic automobile wiring harness company, and Haichang Intelligence is the upstream of Tianhai Electronics.

The clustering of high - quality enterprises in the industrial chain for listing is highly consistent with the strong warming of Henan's local real - economy industries. Currently, the production of new - energy vehicles in Henan is growing by leaps and bounds. After entering the top ten in the country for the first time in 2025, it further rose to the seventh place in the first quarter of this year.

Quality

To measure the strength of a regional capital market, in addition to observing the number of listed companies, it is more necessary to evaluate the development quality and internal quality.

During the 14th Five - Year Plan period, the market - value growth rates of listed companies in Hubei, Henan, and Anhui were 138%, 135%, and 135% respectively, all slightly lower than the national level (143%), and the medium - and long - term growth rhythms tended to be consistent.

However, an obvious current change is that hard technology is increasingly dominating the growth logic of the capital market, and the balanced pattern among the three provinces is being broken.

Since the beginning of this year, with the outbreak of the optical - communication sector, the total market value of Hubei's A - share listed companies has soared. As of the close on May 20, 2026, it was about 2.8 trillion yuan, with a growth rate of 35.9%, far higher than the national level (10.1%). From the perspective of the growth structure, the three optoelectronic giants, Yangtze Optical Fibre and Cable Joint Stock Limited Company, Accelink Technologies Co., Ltd., and Huagong Technologies Industry Co., Ltd., contributed more than half of the market - value growth.

During the same period, the total market value of Henan was about 2.2 trillion yuan, a 5.9% increase from the beginning of this year. The growth rate was far lower than that of Hubei and slightly lower than that of Anhui (7.8%) and the national level. Due to the growth - rate difference, Hubei's current total market value is 600 billion yuan higher than that of Henan, and the long - standing close competition between the two provinces in the capital market has changed.

More importantly, the two domestic storage - chip giants, CXMT and YMTC, belonging to Anhui and Hubei respectively, are expected to be listed soon. The market generally predicts that their valuations are expected to exceed one trillion yuan. Once the listings are realized, it will drive a significant increase in the market values of Anhui and Hubei, further reshaping the capital - market pattern in central China.

Zeng Gang, the dean of the Urban Development Research Institute of East China Normal University, told Urban Evolution that the gap in the development of the capital market is due to the fact that Henan's endowment of scientific and technological innovation resources is weaker than that of the other two provinces.

Taking the provincial capitals as an example, Wuhan is a major city in science, education, and a high - ground for scientific and technological innovation. Hefei, with the help of the University of Science and Technology of China, has seen school - local cooperation play a key role in local scientific and technological innovation. In contrast, Zhengzhou is relatively short of science, education, and scientific and technological innovation resources.

The number of enterprises on the Science and Technology Innovation Board can directly reflect the gap. Currently, there are only 6 in Henan, ranking behind among the central provinces and far less than those in Anhui (25), Hubei (17), and Hunan (17).

The overall R & D investment of listed companies also shows the situation. In 2025, the total R & D investment of Henan's A - share companies was 26.916 billion yuan, and 6 companies had R & D investments of more than 1 billion yuan. In the same year, the two figures for Anhui were 56.721 billion yuan and 11 companies respectively.

Focusing on the internal industrial structure, Yu Xin'an, the dean of the Central Plains Innovation and Development Research Institute in Henan, and others wrote an article at the beginning of this year, stating that Henan lags behind in the layout of emerging and future industries, and there are problems of insufficient "quantity" and poor "quality" of new driving forces.

Further focusing on Henan's manufacturing industry, the proportion of traditional industries still reaches as high as 46%, while the proportion of emerging industries is only 24%. In line with the requirements of high - quality development and the development level of advanced provinces, Henan's industrial - system construction still faces a series of deep - seated challenges and shortcomings.

Breakthrough

Facing regional competition, Henan urgently needs to identify its own comparative advantages and clarify the direction of breakthrough.

Zeng Gang believes that the low efficiency of scientific and technological achievement transformation is a common problem in scientific and technological innovation across the country. Henan has a good foundation in traditional manufacturing and a large - scale industrial economy, which provides a broad application scenario for scientific and technological innovation. Henan should build on its scenario advantages, continuously expand the foundation of emerging and future industries, cultivate and incubate more hard - technology listed companies, and gradually overcome the phenomenon of "big but not strong".

To address the shortcoming of weak R & D capabilities, Henan can actively seek external support. Its geographical location in the Central Plains gives it natural and favorable conditions for cross - regional scientific and technological cooperation. It should rely on the strategic dividends of the rise of central China, strengthen cooperation with neighboring provinces, improve cross - regional industrial links, and lay a good foundation for subsequent project investment and high - end R & D implementation.

Actually, Henan has already taken the initiative to change -

Based on the actual situation of innovation in the whole province, seven departments such as the Henan Provincial Department of Science and Technology recently jointly issued the "Three - Year Action Plan for High - Quality Cultivation of Technology - Based Enterprises in Henan Province (2026 - 2028)", encouraging enterprises to build high - level innovation platforms, supporting enterprises to establish various R & D platforms such as key laboratories, technology innovation centers, and pilot - scale bases, and enhancing the core competitiveness and influence of enterprises.

In terms of financial support, it is mentioned that policies for patient capital to invest in early - stage, small - scale, long - term, and hard - technology projects should be improved, the "science and technology loan" and "specialized, refined, distinctive, and innovative loan" businesses should be optimized, science and technology investment funds should be promoted, and science and technology insurance should be developed. It will also give play to the role of science and technology innovation vouchers and encourage universities and research institutes to open various scientific research platforms and equipment to enterprises.

It's not just Henan. Compared with the early emphasis on the number of listed enterprises, "quality first" is becoming the consensus of local governments. Behind this, the role of the government is gradually shifting from "reward - driven" to "ecosystem - enabling", and policy tools cover the whole - cycle cultivation mechanism of financing docking, standardized governance, and industrial collaboration.

In recent years, relying on accurate bets on hard technology, many places have witnessed the legend of "one IPO enriches a city". These cases also follow a similar logic: use long - term capital to cultivate local enterprises with core competitiveness and ultimately drive the industrial upgrading of the entire region.

Henan is not without opportunities. The key lies in whether it can transform policy dividends into real growth impetus for enterprises.

Qin Zunwen, the vice - president of the China Urban Economics Association and the secretary - general of the Yangtze River Economic Belt Think - Tank Alliance, told Urban Evolution that Henan can refine and improve the supporting details for enterprise support, learn from the experience of developed coastal regions, optimize incentive policies such as listing rewards, R & D subsidies, and individual - income - tax preferences for talents, and at the same time strengthen on - the - ground guidance to ensure that various scientific and technological innovation support policies are implemented.

This article is from the WeChat official account "Urban Evolution", author: Liu Xuqiang, reprinted by 36Kr with authorization.