High-tech clusters remain key focus of city's development

In the coming five years, Guiyang and Guian New Area in Southwest China's Guizhou province will pour more resources into the development of three industrial clusters centering on big data, electronic information manufacturing and software and information technology services, local officials said.

These clusters, each of which will be worth at least 100 billion yuan ($15.5 billion), are considered important drivers for strengthening the core competitiveness of the digital economy in the city and the new area, said Wu Hongchun, director of the Guiyang bureau of big data development and management.

Chen Yan, mayor of the city, said Guiyang and Guian New Area have strived to boost the digital sector while also working to digitalize the city's industries by using its data advantages.

As a core part of the National Big Data (Guizhou) Comprehensive Pilot Zone, Guiyang, capital of Guizhou, has witnessed rapid growth in the industry over the last few years.

In 2013, the city started to develop big data and attracted major projects invested in by Zhongguancun Science Park, China Telecom and China Unicom, laying a solid foundation for future industrial development.

In 2015, Guiyang was approved by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology to construct a big data industrial cluster zone.

In 2016, the Guizhou government issued regulations on promoting big data development and application. It is China's first local law on big data and has injected impetus into the industry, officials said.

In 2019, the Guiyang city government welcomed 70 big data companies, held groundbreaking ceremonies for 74 projects and completed construction on a further 61 projects.

In the same year, the city's software and information technology service revenue exceeded 16 billion yuan, which saw an increase of 14.3 percent on 2018.

Also, the output value of its telecommunication service totaled 62.6 billion yuan, up 53.5 percent year-on-year.

To further propel the healthy development of the city's digital economy, the Guiyang government plans to improve its service capacities pertaining to trade, security and human resources during the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-25), in a bid to speed up the process of digital industrialization and industrial digitalization.

Projects will play an important role in creating the cluster of big data centers in Guiyang.

The city is promoting the establishment of an ecosystem related to Kunpeng industries formed by Guizhou Yunshang Kunpeng Technology Co, a hardware manufacturer based on Huawei's core Kunpeng processor.

The ecosystem will span from server production, cloud service and system integration solutions to maintenance, data cleansing and applications.

By 2025, Guian New Area will build 14 mega data centers and 4 million servers with a fixed-asset investment of over 40 billion yuan. "Guiyang and Guian New Area have unique advantages and conditions for the development of big data and have attracted many large and super large data centers to settle here. More efforts will be made to create a better environment for the development of big data in the future," said Zhang Jibing, deputy director of the Guian New Area Administrative Committee.

haonan@chinadaily.com.cn