Valley being built in Guian New Area to take high-tech industry in China to new heights

Designated as a key economic driver, Guian New Area is playing a major role in fulfilling Guizhou's construction of the Big Data Valley of China with its burgeoning industries.

Approved as a national new area by the State Council in 2014, Guian New Area is located at the junction of the cities of Guiyang and Anshun, and has a planned area of 1,795 square kilometers.

It is a key economic growth area in western China, a highland for the open economy in the country's inland regions and a demonstration zone for ecological civilization.

In 2015, the area was approved to be built by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology as a national-level big-data industrial cluster in cooperation with Guiyang.

Zhao Deming, Party secretary of Guiyang, said: "We are seizing new opportunities in implementing a strategy for the digital economy and building three industrial clusters of data centers, electronic information manufacturing, and software and information services, each capable of generating 100 billion yuan ($15.33 billion) in annual output value, in a bid to promote the construction of the core area in the national big data comprehensive pilot zone and China's 'big data valley'."

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, the area's GDP stood at 6.56 billion yuan in the first half of 2020, an increase of 4.4 percent year-on-year.

Baishan Cloud, an edge-cloud platform service provider, was founded in the area in 2015.

Edge cloud is an extension of cloud computing. It is used to decentralize power or process content at the edge of the network, which significantly increases the operational efficiency.

"Digital transformation is taking place as a result of business development needs, and we provide them with technology support and platforms," said Ru Yingqing, a partner and vice-chairman at Baishan Cloud.

The company said it has provided services to more than 85 percent of internet users in China and 210 million overseas users.

"Guizhou's big-data strategy and preferential policies are the major attractions for us to start our business here," Ru said.

"The support for big-data businesses comes from various departments of the local government, serving us in a wide range of fields," he said.

"We think the edge-cloud platform service has great development potential, which fits into the company's future plan," he added.

According to a recent report released by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, the market scale of cloud computing is forecast to be close to 400 billion yuan in 2023.

Wang Jun, director of the big data service center in Guian New Area, said, "In 2013, we began mapping out a plan to develop big-data businesses in the area."

Given Guizhou's relatively smaller economic size, the local authorities decided to drive the sector's growth through big-data centers, Wang said.

After years of development, the area is now home to the data centers of high-tech giants Huawei, Tencent and Apple.

With a total investment of 8 billion yuan, the Huawei Cloud Data Center is planned to span an area of more than 1.01 million square meters.

With construction starting in 2017, the compound is to serve as a hub of data processing and storage, as well as for production, maintenance and engineer training.

In 2020, its first phase of construction, covering some 480,000 sq m, was completed, capable of housing 400,000 storage servers.

Near the Huawei center stands the Tencent Data Center, which was constructed in a tunnel. Construction began in 2017 and is expected to be completed this year.

Tucked away in a mountain tunnel, the Tencent center will benefit from Guizhou's cool weather and green electricity. This will contribute to the center's eco-friendly, effective and energy-saving construction and operation, according to Wang.

Covering an area of 106,411 sq m, the Apple China (Guian) Data Center is another highlight of the area's big-data business landscape. The project, which began construction in 2018, is worth 954 million yuan in total investment.

These big-data centers are helping tackle local needs for development and are thus promoting the integration of the city and industry, Wang said.

"With two years of development, the cloud computing industry has taken shape and its output value is expected to surpass 5-6 billion yuan this year," he said.

With the target of building Guizhou into a strategic location for national-data infrastructure, the area will welcome more big-data centers for industries including finance in the future, Wang added.