According to a government circular, the China State Council has approved the upgrade of high-tech industrial development zones in several regions. Ningxiang in Central China’s Hunan province, Lhasa in Southwest China’s Tibet autonomous region, Xuchang in Central China’s Henan province and Anqing in East China’s Anhui province have all been approved for modernisation.
All the improvements have been made to strengthen the region, modernise the economic system and boost real-economy upgrades. The high-tech industrial zones are required to promote innovation and utilise talent. The areas need to cultivate high-tech companies, industries, science and technology and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
The expanded Lhasa development zone will span 16.8096 square kilometres and will foster the western region’s large-scale development. The Ningxiang development zone will span 14.3607 square kilometres and is expected to accelerate the growth of the country’s central regions and the Yangtze River Economic Belt. The expanded Xuchang development zone will span 11.0168 square kilometres and will jump-start development in the country’s central regions. The Anqing development zone will cover an area of 9.588 square kilometres and will promote the development of the country’s central regions and the Yangtze River Economic Belt.
The circular urged the zones to strictly adhere to national land use plans and other related guidelines and go through land use approval procedures following regulations. The zones’ construction should be based on the principles of efficient and intensive use of land resources. According to the circular, related departments should strengthen the zones’ leadership and management and investigate a sound ecosystem to accelerate its high-quality development.
China has made significant investments in industrial robotics to help the industry modernise. The massive steps have propelled the country to the top of the global rankings for robot density, indicating a significant improvement in the country’s industrial automation level.
The nation has the world’s fastest-growing robot market, with the most annual installations, and it has had the most significant operational stock of robots each year since 2016. Last year, China’s manufacturing industry had 322 functional industrial robots per 10,000 employees, ranking fifth globally.
Aside from high-tech industrial zones, China is constantly expanding its digital transformation centres. For example, the China Provincial Development and Reform Commission recently announced the list of the second batch of digital transformation promotion centres in Liaoning Province.
There are 13 other provincial-level digital transformation promotion centres to assist small and medium-sized businesses in improving transformation capabilities, lowering costs, and shortening transformation cycles. In addition to the previously announced first batch of lists, the province has 29 digital transformation promotion centres.
The Provincial Development and Reform Commission believes that the digital transformation promotion centre should fully integrate resources to help small and medium-sized businesses. The province government will provide transformation tools, products, technologies, and customised solutions to support business digital transformation and development. The centre promotes traditional businesses, internet platform enterprises, industry platform enterprises, and financial institutions.
China also developed the Tianfu data centre, a national hub node for the Chengdu-Chongqing integrated computing power network, to support the digital transformation agenda. The “East Counting West Counting” project, launched in February of this year, consists of eight national hub nodes of the nationwide computer network, one of which is the Chengdu-Chongqing node.
The project will be centred in the Sichuan province, focusing on constructing Tianfu data centre clusters. The government chose the section after thoroughly examining Sichuan’s industrial layout, energy structure, geology, climate, and other factors. In addition, China authorities will build several internal data centres in cities to form a province-wide integration of “cluster-city” complementarity and a “cloud-edge” data centre coordination system.
The Tianfu data centre cluster starting area will be built to a high standard and will have a capacity of 500,000 racks by 2025. By 2030, computing power and effectiveness will be nationally advanced, and the project’s central node will be operational.
