Jinan takes lead in developing digital economy

Jinan has adopted a strategy of developing digital economy into a leading industry as well as promoting the coordinated innovation and development of digital industrialization, industrial digitization, and integrated networking, said Xie Kun, vice-mayor of Jinan, at a Shandong provincial press conference held on Feb 28.

Jinan is stepping up efforts to enhance the development capacity of its core digital economy industries. In 2023, the scale of the city's core digital economy industries reached 655.9 billion yuan ($91.16 billion), with the revenue from the software industry reaching 531.5 billion yuan, ranking seventh in the national evaluation of software cities.

Work on key projects such as the BYD semiconductor project is being accelerated to boost the growth of the integrated circuit industry. Jinan is home to an industrial cluster led by a group of major enterprises such as Inspur Group, along with more than 2,000 other companies.

Jinan is the first city to launch free diagnostic services for enterprises seeking digital transformation. A total of 625 companies have received assistance in meeting the integration standard, and the city has been selected as the first national pilot city for the digital transformation of small and medium-sized enterprises.

Jinan has also accelerated the layout of new information infrastructure, coordinating the simultaneous development of gigabit fiber optics, 5G, data centers, and future networks. With a total of 47,000 5G base stations constructed, the city leads the province in 5G traffic offloading ratio and broadband user download speed.