SOURCE / INDUSTRIES
Guizhou, home of China’s ‘silicon village’, sees GDP surging on big data
Home of China’s ‘silicon village’ seeing rapid growth
Published: Jan 22, 2019 09:18 PM


A building under construction in Guiyang, capital of Southwest China's Guizhou Province. Photo: VCG



Guiyang, Southwest China's Guizhou Province, home of China's "silicon village", has witnessed rapid growth of the local economy, buoyed by the big data industry.

Guiyang is estimated to have realized GDP of 389.1 billion yuan ($57.16 billion) in 2018, rising 10 percent from the previous year. 

The growth rate has ranked top among provincial cities for six consecutive years, according to a report from chinanews.com, citing local official data.

The report said big data has been an important driving force for the economy, and the new economy value-added reached 21 percent of local GDP last year, two percentage points higher than in 2017. 

Guiyang's economic growth lagged the country in previous years, and the improvement of its infrastructure, the expansion of the tourism sector and big data industry have largely helped the province to grow, Tian Yun, vice president of the Beijing Economic Operation Association, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

He added that the big data sector is a power-intensive industry and the province is rich in such resources as water and electricity at a relatively low cost.

Guiyang has deployed a big data strategy starting from 2013, after Premier Li Keqiang called for the promotion of deep integration of industrialization and informationization.

In September 2013, the Guiyang government linked up with the Zhongguancun Science Park in Beijing to develop the big data industry, and Guiyang's big data strategy is put under a provincial framework.

In 2014, Guizhou Province released a guideline to promote the big data industry, aiming to make it become the new driving force for the economy in the next few years.

After years of development, the mountainous province of Guizhou has attracted a raft of heavyweight players, including Apple, Qualcomm, Huawei, Tencent, Alibaba and Foxconn, to establish cloud computing and big data centers as well as regional headquarters, according to the Xinhua News Agency. 

Guizhou has a profound base in terms of infrastructure construction and talent, and the government has targeted on the big data industry ahead of other provinces for years, Niu Li, an economist with the State Information Center, a government think tank, told the Global Times on Tuesday.   

However, Niu said Guiyang should look for a way to apply big data to development as a key issue, and Tian suggested that if the capital hopes to further advance its economy in the future, it is expected to apply its big data technology into the public services sector to attract more talent to the province.