Capitalizing on "Eastern Data and Western Computing", Guiyang starts a new chapter in high-quality digital economy development

A news report by Huanqiu.com

GUIYANG, China, Aug. 6, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Amid the global wave of digital transformation, the digital economy, with its unique charm and limitless potential, is becoming a new engine for economic and social development. China, the world's second-largest economy, is accelerating its advancement of digital economy. Guiyang, a city in Southwestern China, has emerged as a prominent player in this field, leveraging its unique natural resources and forward-thinking strategic vision.

Guiyang, the capital of Guizhou Province, is home to natural beauty and rich ethnic culture, showing extraordinary vitality and creativity in the digital economy. The CPC Guiyang Municipal Committee and the Guiyang Municipal People's Government place vital significance on the development of the digital economy, viewing it as a crucial tool for urban transition, upgrading, and high-quality development.

Guiyang has always adhered to policy guidance and strategic orientation in promoting the high-quality development of its digital economy. By establishing key policies, such as Opinions of the CPC Guiyang Municipal Committee on Unswervingly Implementing the Digital Economy Driven Urban Development Strategy and Fully Promoting the High-quality Development of the Gui'an Digital Economy, Guiyang has clarified its development path, led by the five core elements of the digital economy - computing power, empowerment, industry, governance, and value. This strategic plan secures and directs the high-quality development of Guiyang's digital economy.

Guiyang recognizes that digital "new infrastructure construction" serves as a cornerstone for the development of the digital economy. Therefore, leveraging Guizhou's approval as one of the national hub nodes for the integrated computing power network, Gui'an New District in Guiyang, one of the top 10 data center clusters in China, has actively supported the "Eastern Data and Western Computing" project by providing robust computing infrastructure and computing power scheduling networks for the national strategies such as "Eastern Data and Western Storage, Eastern Data and Western Computing, Eastern Data and Western Rendering, and Eastern Data and Western Training." As of now, 95,800 smart computing chips have been deployed in Gui'an New District, delivering a computer performance of 30.7 EFLOPS (one quintillion (10¹⁸) floating-point operations per second), which accounts for 13.3% of China's total computing power at the end of 2023. This scale is equivalent to the computational output of over 60 million mainstream laptops.

For example, Huawei Cloud, a leading computing power company, has set up its global headquarters and largest cloud data center in Gui'an New District. In 2023, Gui'an Huawei Cloud Data Center provided cloud services and solutions to over 380 companies in Guizhou while aiding local companies in localizing over 100 information systems and generating over 53 billion yuan in global revenue.

While establishing itself as China's leading data center highland, Guiyang remains committed to improving network infrastructure to reduce latency between Guiyang and developed regions, thus providing strong network support for the growth of the digital economy.

Guiyang views industrial digitalization as a crucial way to foster the digital economy. Traditional industries, such as Maotai-flavor liquor, coal mine, and chemical industry, are empowered with digital technologies including big data, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence, which drives their transformation and upgrading. In addition, Guiyang is promoting new business formats and models within the digital economy and is developing emerging areas such as industry-specific large language models to enhance industry intelligence. Moreover, Guiyang has built a digital transformation public service platform and incubated integrated service providers, aiming to offer companies an all-encompassing range of digital transformation services.

Guiyang focuses on two core areas in digital industrialization: electronic information manufacturing and software and IT services. By attracting and nurturing internationally competitive leading enterprises, Guiyang has established an electronic information manufacturing industry cluster. At the same time, Guiyang is stepping up its efforts to develop new business formats, such as cloud infrastructure and cloud software products, and accelerate the development of software and information technology services. In addition, Guiyang is actively exploring emerging areas such as future manufacturing, Beidou application, and blockchain, injecting new momentum into the high-quality development of the digital economy.

Guiyang considers digital governance to be a significant means of improving government efficiency. Digital technologies are utilized to optimize government governance processes and service patterns, giving impetus to innovations in governance. Furthermore, digital application scenarios, such as smart emergency response and smart government affairs, have been established, enabling smarter government services.

Recognizing data as an indispensable factor of production in the digital economy, Guiyang is taking the initiative to drive reforms related to the market-oriented allocation of data elements to translate data into resources, assets, and capital. By building a national-level data exchange center and a sound data transaction standard system, Guiyang offers a more convenient, efficient, and secure platform for data transactions. Additionally, Guiyang emphasizes data security, strengthening data security supervision and the construction of a risk prevention system to secure and legitimize data flows and uses.

The digital economy stands as the key to nurturing new quality productive forces. As the strategic fulcrum for the "Eastern Data and Western Computing" project and an important hub node of China's integrated national computing power network, Guizhou has been ranked top nationwide in the growth rate of the digital economy for eight consecutive years. In 2023, Guizhou reaped a revenue of 85.62 billion yuan in software and information technology services, representing a 20.7% increase; Among these, the digital economy accounted for over 42%, a growth of 3 percentage points from last year, narrowing the gap with the national average by 0.5 percentage points. The province continues to lead the country in growth rate. In 2024, Guizhou's digital economy is expected to account for over 45% of regional GDP.

After years of effort, Guiyang has achieved remarkable fruits in the digital economy. With an increasing number of enterprises, continuous improvement in technological innovation capabilities, and accelerating industrial upgrading, Guiyang has embarked on a path to success in high-quality digital economy development. In the future, Guiyang will remain dedicated to the innovation-driven development strategy and high-quality development requirements, deepen reform and opening-up, and engage in innovative practice in the field of digital economy. Moreover, Guiyang will promote the sustainable, healthy, and rapid development of the digital economy by strengthening exchanges and cooperation with advanced regions at home and abroad, building mutually beneficial mechanisms with win-win cooperation. These initiatives aim to make new and greater contributions to the economic and social development of Guiyang and the whole country!