Nanning, capital of the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, will move to accelerate the construction of the Nanning core base of the China-ASEAN Information Harbor and will also establish a large-scale big data cluster.

That's according to Yin Ping, director of Nanning big data development bureau, who was speaking at a news conference held on Dec 23.

Nanning -- the closest capital city in China to ASEAN member countries -- has been giving full play to the China-ASEAN Information Harbor, to push forward the establishment of a regional cluster for the digital economy for ASEAN.

Yin noted that Nanning started its three-year construction of information network infrastructure in April this year.

At present, Nanning has formed several clusters for the digital economy – including Wuxiang New District and Qingxiu district -- attracting a number of famous industrial giants such as Huawei, Alibaba, Inspur Group, Tencent and Lenovo.

The China-ASEAN Smart City Innovation Center, one of five industrial parks for the digital economy in Nanning, has attracted a total of 28 companies, scientific research institutes and innovative groups from China and ASEAN including Chinese publicly listed intelligent speech and artificial intelligence company iFlytek.

Currently, the Nanning area of the China (Guangxi) Pilot Free Trade Zone has been devoting its efforts towards developing the digital economy, in such areas as cloud computing, big data, electronic commerce, scientific innovation, the smart city, as well as intelligent manufacturing.

Officials said the output value of the digital economy in the Nanning area achieved a growth rate of more than 59.2 percent year-on-year in the first three quarters in 2020.