By LI Linxu

Digital economy has become a major growth engine in southwest China's Guizhou province, injecting new momentum into local economic development and industrial upgrading.

In 2023, digital economy accounted for 42 percent of the province's gross domestic product (GDP), according to the latest statistics released at a news briefing hosted by the Information Office of Guizhou Provincial People's Government.

This year, the province is striving to grow its digital economy to surpass a milestone of one trillion RMB, accounting for 45 percent of its GDP.

Now, it is seizing the development opportunities of emerging digital industries, such as artificial intelligence, cloud computing and data centers.

A data center under construction in Guizhou province. (PHOTO: XINHUA)

As one of eight national computing hub nodes, Guizhou currently has 39 major data centers in operation or under construction, among which there are more than 20 large-scale data centers. It has become one of the leading provinces in China in terms of its number of large-scale data centers.

The province saw breakthrough growth in its computing power in 2023, with over 70,000 intelligent computing chips in use, a frontrunner in the country, said an official from the Guizhou Provincial Development and Reform Commission.

Last year, it also reached a milestone in 5G infrastructure construction, deploying 35,000 new base stations across key areas, industrial parks and transport hubs.

Thanks to such construction efforts in digital infrastructure, the province has attracted a large number of overseas and domestic tech giants, including Apple, Huawei, Tencent and China Mobile, to set up data centers there.

Of particular note is that one of the province's data centers has been entered as one of 21 model cases of the 2022 National New-type Large-scale Data Centers.

Going forward, more efforts will be made to accelerate the development of digital economy, build a national computing highland, cultivate digital industrial clusters, and promote digital empowerment across various sectors, as per the province's government work report.