The government of the Inner Mongolia autonomous region is encouraging the development of a big data industry and is introducing a series of policies to attract investment and skill, with an aim to make the region a big data center in northern China by 2020.

The cooperation agreements, which involve 93 projects and 50.8 billion yuan ($7.5 billion) of investment, were signed at the 2016 Inner Mongolia Big Data Promotion Conference held in Beijing on Monday.

Inner Mongolia's big data and cloud computing industries are expected to have more than 3 million servers in use over the next three to five years.

The local government has announced preferential policies designed to attract talent and investors, covering land use, electricity utilization, talent, innovation, taxation, investment and financing related to big data and information industry.

Li Jiheng, Inner Mongolia's Party chief, said: "The region has undertaken the big data industry as a major initiative to promote industrial upgrading and transform the economic development pattern. We have accomplished obvious achievements."

Li added that the region enjoys unique conditions and advantages to develop the big data industry.

A number of information industry heavyweights, including Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, Baidu Inc and Tencent Holdings Ltd, have set up offices and three major telecom carriers - China Mobile Communications Corporation, China United Network Communications Group Co and China Telecom Corp - have established data centers in the region.

"The output of the big data industry in the region is expected to surpass 100 billion yuan by 2020," said Bu Xiaolin, chairwoman of the Inner Mongolia autonomous region.

Hohhot, as the capital of Inner Mongolia, has also made great strides in cloud computing and big data development. It has established a 10-billion-yuan big data industrial development fund to encourage the construction of cloud computing centers and big data demonstration areas.

The city is trying to build a cloud platform for industries such as clean energy, dairy, biological medicine and rare earth to exhibit their products, management experience and marketing skills.

Sun Pishu, chairman of Inspur Group Co, China's largest server maker based in eastern China's Shandong province, said that Inner Mongolia has an abundant electricity supply and enjoys an advantageous geographical location, both of which are beneficial for big data center construction.

"Inspur has already participated in the construction of the cloud computing and big data base in Inner Mongolia and owns three government service cloud platforms in Hohhot, Wuhai and Manzhouli," said Sun.

Sun added that the region's excellent investment environment had attracted the company and it will invest 5 billion yuan to build a big data industrial park and cloud computing center in the region.

Jin Jianhang, president of Alibaba, said the company is now working together with Hohhot to promote the application of big data in agriculture e-commerce.

It is estimated the annual growth rate of China's big data industry will be over 50 percent in the next five years, and China will account for 20 percent of the world's data capacity by 2020.

Contact the writers at fanfeifei@chinadaily.com.cn and yuanhui@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 11/09/2016 page14)