China-ASEAN Digital Economic Industrial Park will start operations by the end of March, officials from the Big Data Development Bureau of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region announced on Jan 21.

Located in Nanning's Qingxiu district, the 320-mu (0.07-hectare) park was built at a cost of around 5.8 billion yuan ($916 million). Over 80 companies have signed agreements of intent to settle in the zone.

The park aims to become an industrial production and service base on the application and innovation of information technology, forming a complete industrial chain integrating research, development, as well as production of servers, PC machines, operating systems, middleware, office software, and streaming software.  

Guangxi has put forward that the region will formulate a digital economy ecosystem with relatively strong core competitiveness by 2025, becoming a new hub for digital economy cooperation and development facing ASEAN, as well as an important gateway for opening-up and cooperation in digital economy under the Belt and Road Initiative. 

Zhou Fei of the Big Data Development Bureau of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region noted that the park will further boost construction of the China-ASEAN Information Harbor, adding that Guangxi will carry out more cooperation with ASEAN in sectors spanning smart cities, 5G, artificial intelligence, e-commerce, big data, blockchain, as well as smart agriculture.