On August 30, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced the first batch of pilot cities for the digital transformation of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). A total of 30 cities including Changsha, Suzhou and Dongguan were shortlisted.

This June, the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology jointly issued a circular on piloting the digital transformation of SMEs in cities. Cities will be selected in three batches from 2023 to 2025 to carry out the pilot work. The aim is to support the innovative development of SMEs and to accelerate their digital transformation. The pilot cities will each receive a fixed allocation from the central government. The funds will be used to support and accelerate the firms' digital transformation and make their experience replicable and scalable, to improve their innovation level and core competitiveness, and to help them strengthen cooperation in industrial chains and achieve integrated development.

Since the beginning of this year, the city of Changsha has engaged with the province's "Empowering Enterprises with Intelligence" action plan, making targeted efforts in consolidating its intelligent infrastructure, strengthening its intelligent supply network, and accelerating its intelligent applications, so as to continuously empower and facilitate the development of its enterprises and the upgrading of its industries. From January to June, 14,394 enterprises in the city became new cloud service users and 218 became new platform users.

Source: en.changsha.gov.cn