Guizhou pitches big data to Silicon Valley

Senior officials from Guizhou province are visiting Silicon Valley to promote their big data comprehensive pilot zone, hoping the preferential policies Southwest China provides and its abundant resources will help generate more collaboration and exchanges between Guizhou and San Francisco.

Director of Asia-Pacific marketing of Visit California, Kassie Fraser (left) and Guizhou Provincial Tourism Development Committee Member, Shi Jingyi (right) sign tourism cooperation memorandum between California and Guizhou in San Francisco on Tuesday.Congjiang Wang / for China Daily

Chen Gang, secretary of the CPC Guiyang Municipal Committee and a member of the Standing Committee of the CPC Guizhou Provincial Committee, said the Chinese central government has pinned high hopes on the development of the big data industry nationwide and chose Guizhou to start the pilot zone.

He spoke at a seminar on Monday in Santa Clara, California, which drew researchers, industry insiders and local officials.

"We can explore big data sharing, data center integration, the whole industry agglomeration, besides big data flow and dissemination," said Chen, who is also deputy director of the leading group on the construction and development of the Guizhou Big Data Comprehensive Pilot Zone.

Since Chen and his 20-member delegation arrived in the Bay Area six days ago, the team reached out to the high-tech industries in Silicon Valley, and scholars at universities such as UC Berkeley.

"They are shuffling back and forth around the Bay Area in order to meet more professionals and better present Guizhou and their big data industry," said Ren Faqiang, deputy consul general at the Chinese Consulate General in San Francisco, who also attended the seminar.

"The United States remains the world's most important economy powerhouse, and Silicon Valley is the most famous cradle for innovation and high-tech incubation," said Chen Gang, who used to work in Beijing and supervised the capital city's high-tech industry.

"Through my many business trips to the US and the Silicon Valley in particular, I'm glad that a lot of collaborations and cooperation took place which benefit both sides," Chen said.

Now stationed in Guiyang, capital city of the mountainous Guizhou province, Chen and his team are eager to showcase the vigor and potential of his new territory and facilitate more China-US cooperation in the big data industry.

Citing the case about how the Guiyang government uses big data to administer unlicensed taxi vehicles and clean up the on-demand transportation industry, Chen said the government has adopted big data applications across settings to help raise efficiency and accountability.

Guizhou occupies an important position regarding China's national strategic layout of the big data industry, said Chen Gang.

"Guizhou National Big Data Pilot Zone is the only zone of its kind approved by the central government to carry research and development. The habitat is fully functional – the cloud service platforms, open data resources and a wide range of big data industry clusters are emerging here."

In recent years, Guizhou has launched cooperation with international companies at home and abroad and offered them preferential policies.

"Cloud computing and big data have been the driving force of Guizhou's economy," said Chen, adding that Alibaba, Baidu, Qualcomm, Dell, HP, Oracle, Microsoft and Google all operate in Guizhou with business scope ranging from unmanned vehicles, smart city and server chips to energy transmission and storage.

Guizhou started sponsoring the Guiyang International Big Data Expo two years ago and drew more than 20,000 guests worldwide.

"If you have missed the investment opportunity in Guangdong or Zhejiang 30 years ago, by no means should you miss that of Guizhou today," said Jack Ma, founder of e-commerce giant Alibaba, who attended the expo for two consecutive years.

Through its big data platform, Guizhou on the Digital Cloud, which allows integral data storage, specification, exchange and sharing, the government vows to increase efficiency. "We believe the platform will bring benefits to enterprises and startups by facilitating more innovation through data sharing," Chen said.

In addition, the energy richness and geological stability enables Guizhou to construct a large green data center in South China. Similar to the US West Coast in terms of energy diversity and climate conditions, Guizhou was positioned when the central government was looking for a place to build its national big data center.

To date, the province has the rack capacity for 2 million servers, which makes it a world-class computing center on data storage, analysis, exploration and data flow.

In 2016, Qualcomm launched its local offices in Guizhou with a focus on the production of high-end server chips.

"We are making more and more friends based on the shared idea that big data is the trend and will benefit the entire world," Chen said. "We look forward to welcoming American investors, entrepreneurs and big data talents from the Silicon Valley."