A bird's-eye view of Wuxi. [Photo provided to wuxi.gov.cn]

Wuxi, a pioneer city of China's Internet of Things (IoT) industry, has become a navigator of the industry after 15 years of development. Its IoT industrial cluster has been selected as a high-scoring member of the first batch of national advanced manufacturing industrial clusters.

Latest statistics show that in 2023, the scale of the IoT industrial cluster in Wuxi totaled 451.16 billion yuan ($63.37 billion), a year-on-year increase of 13.2 percent, and a complete industrial chain with over 3,500 enterprises has taken shape in the city.

The shot shows the scene photographed by a drone from Wuxi's first civil unmanned aerial vehicle test flight base. [Photo provided to wuxi.gov.cn]

In recent years, Wuxi has set its eyes on the low-altitude economy, taking it as one of the future industries in its strategic layout. To further boost the city's low-altitude economy, China Telecom has leveraged its advantage in cloud-internet integration to form the first 5G low-altitude intelligence network within the city, satisfying the basic requirements of low-altitude flying, that is, full coverage, vital timeliness, and high safety, noted Ding Yang, deputy general manager of the Wuxi branch of China Telecom.

In addition, the company has actively participated in local government's low-altitude industry planning, infrastructure construction, and service operation support and collaborated in building Wuxi's first civil unmanned aerial vehicle test flight base and improving infrastructure related to communication, navigation, monitoring, and meteorology.

As the country's first national pilot zone for the Internet of Vehicles, Wuxi has built the world's largest city-level cellular vehicle-to-everything (C-V2X) network in just five years. This year, it has been selected as a pilot city for applying "vehicle-road-cloud integration" in intelligent connected vehicles.

"Vehicle-road-cloud integration" refers to a concept in transportation and technology that involves the seamless connection and communication between vehicles, the road infrastructure, and cloud-based systems.

Geely (Wuxi) Innovation Center. [Photo provided to wuxi.gov.cn]

Geely (Wuxi) Innovation Center, the core supporter of Wuxi's vehicle-road-cloud integration, is accelerating the construction of three technical scenarios in Wuxi Economic Development District, including vehicles sensing traffic lights in real-time and automated valet parking, Wang Cang, chief operating officer at Geely (Wuxi) Innovation Center, introduced.

ThunderSoft, the world's leading intelligent operating system and intelligent edge device and technology provider, has also been an active participant in Wuxi's vehicle-road-cloud integration, as seen in the intelligent connected projects in WEDD and Xishan district.

Statistics show the city has upgraded and transformed 3,487 intelligent connected vehicles, with 301 autonomous vehicles (equipment) in operation. Adapting the Beidou positioning system and high-precision maps, these vehicles have conducted commercial operations in shuttle services, logistics, and environmental sanitation.

Wuxi also leads the nation in integrating digital and real economy with the popularity rates of digital R&D design tools, key procedure, and operational management digitization, reaching 92.6 percent, 69.1 percent, and 86.5 percent, respectively.

The city currently has 33 provincial-level leading service institutions in intelligent manufacturing and 23 provincial-level key industrial internet platforms, leading in quantity across the province.

Digiwin, a planner and integrator of intelligent manufacturing solutions, has developed a more inclusive, open, and advanced digital-intelligence-driven platform Athena, which supports enterprises in building digital capabilities and developing core competitiveness.

Based on this platform, the company is set to increase R&D investment, expand new application scenarios, and combine data and intelligent technology, leading the industry to innovate in production factors and make breakthroughs in productivity.