A brand-new industry is thriving in Qingyang, a city nestled in the Loess Plateau of Northwest China's Gansu province. It is home to a national computing hub established at the end of 2021, and now the hub serves as a backbone for China's burgeoning digital economy.

To date, Qingyang has connected with over 2,100 digital economy companies. Among them, 153, including China Energy Construction, Kingsoft Cloud, and Chindata, have registered subsidiaries in the city.

This year, Qingyang invested 19.26 billion yuan ($2.66 billion) in data center construction and equipment manufacturing, achieving a total computing power of over 7,000 petaflops.

The three major telecom operators - China Telecom, China Mobile, and China Unicom - have all built and opened direct links from Qingyang to Xi'an and Lanzhou. They are making every effort to establish an all-optical transmission base for high-speed access to the computing network.

In early March, Qingyang introduced a policy to issue computing power coupons worth 100 million yuan annually, with the aim of supporting the development of the large-scale artificial intelligence model industry.

"This year, we have collaborated with leading companies across the entire industry spectrum, encompassing the AI computing power base, AI computing power system platform, AI computing power network, and AI scenario applications," said Mi Shitao, deputy head of the city’s data bureau. "Together, we are working to establish a national benchmark city for AI," he added.