At the recent conference on promoting the development of the digital economy, Chongqing put forward a series of digital economy development goals for the coming years. To name a few, it aims to expand the aggregate of Chongqing's digital economy to more than RMB 1 trillion, build a batch of digital economy industry clusters with each worth over RMB 100 billion, and cultivate 100 leading digital economy enterprises and other market players. As Chongqing is working towards these goals, its digital economy development is shifting into a higher gear.

The Tencent Cloud Computing Data Center in Chongqing

Since resuming work in April, the site of the second phase of the Tencent Cloud Computing Data Center in Western China has been in full swing. According to the head of Tencent's Southwest Headquarters, the project will have the computing capability of over 200,000 servers once completed. And there are nine more data centers in the same park, such as Inspur and GDS.

In addition to Western China's leading data center cluster, Chongqing is also home to 42,000 5G base stations, several industries of Internet platforms, and more. In the era of the new-generation technological and industrial revolution, Chongqing plans to invest RMB 398.3 billion to implement and reserve 375 new infrastructure projects in a rolling manner by 2022. By then, a nationally leading fundamental support system for new-generation information will take shape in Chongqing.

A worker is establishing the 5G network.

Chen Jinshan, Director of Chongqing Municipal Commission of Economy and Information Technology, said that since 2017, Chongqing has attracted more than 5,700 big data intelligence enterprises and introduced intelligent technologies to more than 5,000 enterprises stepwise, thus cutting costs and improving efficiency.

Over recent years, several leading digital economy enterprises such as Tencent, Alibaba, Baidu, iFlytek, and Inspur have ventured into Chongqing or made more investments there. Lei Aijing, general manager of Alibaba Cloud Innovation Center (Chongqing), said that since establishment a year ago, the center had drawn 44 digital economy enterprises. Of them, 40% are in IoT, 30% online platform, and 20% artificial intelligence. An effective eco-system for digital economy development is thus created.

The smart life experience in Chongqing Science and Technology Museum

Moreover, Chongqing will continue to speed up the development and application of "smart life". So far, 31 million resident electronic health cards have been given out; nearly 80% of hospitals at the second level or above have opened online reservations for treatment services; all government administration services are available in the Yukuaiban app.

With a two-digit growth for consecutive years, Chongqing's digital economy has emerged as a key pillar of local economic development. In the first quarter this year, when COVID-19 dealt a hard blow to the whole world, Chongqing's digital economy still realized growth, posting an added value of RMB 115.73 billion and year-on-year increase of 0.3%.