Recently, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) officially replied to the People's Government of Hunan Province. It will support Changsha in establishing a national artificial intelligence (AI) innovation and application pilot zone.

The letter pointed out that the Changsha National Artificial Intelligence Innovation and Application Pilot Zone should give full play to the advantages of profound industrial foundation and strong infrastructure construction; further build a hub of intelligent computing facilities; and, explore a new mode of efficient application and operation. Efforts should be made to:

- Strengthen basic core industries such as intelligent sensors, intelligent chips, and information security;

- Enhance the collaborative research of AI software and hardware;

- Build a safe and reliable industrial ecology;

- Vigorously expand application scenarios;

- Create advantageous and characteristic intelligent industrial clusters such as intelligent manufacturing, smart homes, intelligent construction machinery, intelligent cultural creation, and intelligent security; and,

- Comprehensively improve AI capability to empower the real economy. 

Hunan government has included AI and sensor industry into the key industrial cluster for development, and regarded computing power as one of the "Three Major Supports" to promote high-quality development. In order to thoroughly implement the strategic arrangements made by the provincial Party committee and the provincial government to "strengthen the provincial capital", the Industry and Information Technology Department of Hunan Province and the Changsha Municipal People's Government have actively promoted the establishment of the Changsha National Artificial Intelligence Innovation and Application Pilot Zone.

Changsha is the core area for the development of a new generation of AI industry in Hunan Province. It has gathered more than 2,500 core AI enterprises and main business-related enterprises, and formed a relatively complete industrial system covering base, technology, and application layers of artificial intelligence. The World Computing Conference is permanently held in Changsha. The Xiangjiang Laboratory focusing on AI technology innovation was inaugurated. The Changsha national Internet backbone direct connection point has been opened for operation this September year. The key projects such as the Hunan Branch of the National Industrial Internet Big Data Center and the Computing Power Upgrading Project of the National Supercomputing Center in Changsha are under construction.

In the next step, Hunan will accelerate the Changsha Pilot Zone construction, mapping out a pathway for building a hub of computing power facilities, strengthening basic core industries, promoting technological innovation breakthroughs, cultivating demonstration application scenarios, and creating urban development samples. It will strive to promote the scale of Changsha's AI core industry to reach 30 billion yuan by 2025; drive the scale of related industries to exceed 300 billion yuan; and, make breakthroughs in both breadth and depth of the AI integration rate in key industries.

It was said that Nanjing City of Jiangsu Province and Wuhan City of Hubei Province were also approved as national AI innovation and application pilot zones. This was the second batch of pilot zones approved by MIIT, following 8 pilot zones such as Pudong New Area of Shanghai Municipality and Shenzhen City. There are now 11 pilot zones for innovative application of artificial intelligence in China.

This article is from the Hunan Provincial Government www.enghunan.gov.cn.

Translator: Yu Jiangjiang

Chinese source: hunan.gov.cn