lhasa forum to boost xizang's digital economy
beijing hosts the global digital economy conference (gdec) 2023 from july 4 to 7. (photo: gdec)
by liang yilian
lhasa, the capital of southwest china's xizang autonomous region, aims to revitalize its digital economy with a project that includes constructing national computing centers and intelligent computing platforms, the beijing news reported.
to boost the digitalization drive, beijing hosts the global digital economy conference (gdec) 2023 from july 4 to 7. themed "data driven development, intelligence leading the future," the event will have six summit forums.
the gdec 2023 lhasa summit forum, focusing on "digital bridges crossing the himalayas", is held in lhasa during the conference. the forum is bound to come up with more innovations and plans to stimulate xizang's economic development.
as the development of china's eastern and western areas remains unbalanced, the central government has been working to address the issue. to promote the coordinated development of all regions and achieve common prosperity, the east-data-west-computing project was launched in 2022, which aims to channel more computing resources from the developed eastern regions to the less-developed yet resource-rich western regions.
"most of china's computing infrastructure is distributed in the eastern regions at present, while the western regions have the potential to foster the development of data centers and meet the needs of data computing in the eastern regions," yu xiaohui, head of the china academy of information and communications technology, told china daily.
xizang has considerable advantages in developing a digital economy. the annual average temperature in xizang is lower than in other regions comparatively, which will facilitate dissipation of heat generated by big data centers, an official of the economic and information department of xizang told china tibet online. besides, the dry and clean plateau air has low sulfur dioxide content, which will help extend the service life of the servers.
abundant clean energy is another important factor. xizang has a technically exploitable quantity of hydropower resources of 174 million kw, ranking first in china in this respect, according to a white paper on ecological progress on the qinghai-tibet plateau. the region is also rich in solar energy, geothermal energy and other forms of green energy.
a series of digital economy projects have already been implemented. according to published information, xizang's industrial and digital output accounted for 19 percent of its gdp in 2022.
