In recent years, Huai'an has strengthened the tiered cultivation of high-quality small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), focusing on the goal of strengthening the city with industries. It aims to enhance the resilience and competitiveness of industry chains and supply chains, and promote the cultivation of specialized, sophisticated, distinctive, and innovative enterprises from "quantity increment" to "quality improvement."

So far, the city has cultivated 42 specialized, sophisticated, distinctive, and innovative national-level "little giants," 570 specialized, sophisticated, distinctive, and innovative provincial-level SMEs, and 1,550 innovative SMEs, forming a high-quality SME matrix with clear echelons and sufficient momentum to inject strong momentum into the high-quality development of regional industries.

Huai'an adheres to stratified gradient support and classified targeted cultivation, continuously optimizing its top-level design and working mechanisms. The city has issued special plans for cultivating specialized, sophisticated, distinctive, and innovative enterprises. It is building a whole-chain cultivation system encompassing innovative SMEs, specialized, sophisticated, distinctive, and innovative provincial-level SMEs, and specialized, sophisticated, distinctive, and innovative national-level "little giants," dynamically updating the cultivation database, and implementing dynamic management, focused cultivation, and whole-process tracking of enterprises in the database. In doing so, it provides policy support for enterprises and opens up a channel for growth and advancement.

Huai'an continuously optimizes targeted services for enterprises. The city has comprehensively investigated reserve enterprises and organized special teams to carry out policy publicity and door-to-door guidance across counties, districts, and parks, so as to achieve full coverage of high-quality reserve enterprise training. In view of the difficulties in application, expert groups were invited to review materials one by one and refine Q&As to help make up for weaknesses, thus greatly improving the pass rate of application. These high-quality services have yielded remarkable results. In 2025, 10 enterprises in Huai'an were newly recognized as specialized, sophisticated, distinctive, and innovative national-level "little giants," and 224 were newly recognized as specialized, sophisticated, distinctive, and innovative provincial-level SMEs. Both figures marked record highs.