China's data valley accelerates economic upgrade

With smart chips installed inside their tyres, drivers in southwest China's Guizhou Province can monitor the operating conditions of the tyres and receive maintenance advice via big data.

"It's a better solution to ensure safe driving," said Wang Kun, deputy general manager of the Guizhou Tyre Co., Ltd, adding that this is just one of the innovations supported by big data in his company.

Guizhou, a mountainous province, is also one of China's most impoverished areas. But now, the province has become the front-runner of China's big data industry, whose development has dazzled the world.

The backbone industries of Guizhou used to be the electricity, coal, tobacco, liquor and infrastructure industries. But a few years ago, as China started to upgrade its economy toward a greener vision with more advanced technologies, Guizhou turned instead to making use of big data in its economic restructuring.

Guiyang, capital of Guizhou, also dubbed as China's "data valley," has attracted more than 5,000 data-relevant companies including Apple, Intel, IBM, Huawei, Alibaba and Tencent.

The city has also nurtured a number of local data-relevant companies and promoted face-scanning payment, unmanned driving, and smart medical services based on 5G, big data and cloud computing technologies.

The Full Truck Alliance, which provides online solutions for truck drivers to better select transportation routes and respond to goods suppliers in a timely fashion, first set foot in Guiyang in 2014.

In 2018, the company obtained financing worth 1.9 billion U.S. dollars and was valued 6.5 billion U.S. dollars.

"We owe a great part of our success to the local government, which has been supporting emerging industries such as the big data industry," said Xu Qiang, vice president of the company.

While attracting more players in the big data industry, Guizhou has also upgraded its traditional manufacturing industry via cutting-edge technologies including artificial intelligence (AI).

In 2018, the province supported more than 1,800 enterprises via big data technologies so as to improve productivity and lower costs.

Founded in 2006, the Guizhou Yaguang Electronics Technology Co., Ltd. produces automobile parts including car chips and rectifier diodes.

In 2017, the company spent more than 1.4 million U.S. dollars to upgrade its decision-making system with big data technology. It has since seen its productivity jump 58 percent and its rate of high-quality products spike 33 percent.

Last year, the company reported its sales revenue exceeding 14 million U.S. dollars, with a year-on-year growth of more than 10 percent.

"We realize the importance of economic transformation when applying big data to the upgrading of the production lines and management systems," said Xi Jianjun, chairman of the company.

It is a must to combine technologies with the acceleration of enterprises' upgrades. Otherwise, companies will be left behind in the course of economic development, according to Xi Jianjun.

"With big data and AI technologies to upgrade its manufacturing sector, Guizhou is on the fast lane toward a more sustainable and advanced economy," he said.