Ningxia aims to become national digital economy hub

Ningxia Hui autonomous region is stepping up efforts to make the digital economy its main driver of high-quality growth, according to regional officials.

With its cool climate, abundant green electricity, high security and low network latency, Ningxia has emerged as a national internet exchange hub and a key node in the "East Data, West Computing" project — one of the country's largest data infrastructure projects, according to Chen Chunping, vice-chairman of Ningxia, during a recent media tour organized by the State Council Information Office on Tuesday.

The region's digital economy has grown by more than 10 percent annually over the past five years, with national-level data center clusters rapidly taking shape. Zhongwei city now hosts nine industrial parks, including facilities operated by Amazon, China's four major telecoms, Tencent, Alibaba, Baidu and CICC.

By 2024, Ningxia had built 189,000 standard racks with a computing capacity of 107,000 petaflops and 166,000 intelligent computing cards. More than 80 percent of the electricity powering these centers comes from green sources, and the region is developing zero-carbon industrial parks to cement its role as China's "green computing capital".

Chen also highlighted Ningxia's development of three major industry chains — data services, computing power and artificial intelligence — to attract digital product manufacturing, large model training and "internet+" demonstration projects in healthcare, education and water supply.

More than 200 smart factories and digital workshops have been established, and about half of the region's larger enterprises have undergone digital transformation. By 2027, Ningxia aims to quadruple its capacity to 800,000 standard racks and 800,000 petaflops, expand its AI pilot zone in Yinchuan and deepen integration between its real and digital economies, Chen added.