Dongying embraces bustling digital economy

Dongying city in East China's Shandong province is speeding up efforts to harness its digital economy to boost the city's high-quality development and bring innovation-driven growth to new heights.

According to the city's digital economy guideline, which was released on March 10, Dongying intends to increase the added-value of its digital economy-related core industries by 50 percent by the end of 2023.

The local government mapped out 29 specific measures to develop the digital economy. Focus will be on the construction of digital infrastructure, digital transformation of traditional industries, industrial digitalization, and emerging industries like new energy, new materials, and new-generation information technology.

To achieve its goal, Dongying plans to vigorously develop intelligent manufacturing, accelerate digital transformation of agriculture, and strengthen core industries of the digital economy, such as electronic information manufacturing, as well as software and information technology services to cultivate industrial clusters.

Currently, the city has made great progress in developing its digital economy, which has laid a solid foundation for its further development. Local statistics show that the city's operating revenue of digital economy-related core industries increased by 130 percent in 2022 and 2,019 5G base stations were built.

Over the past year, the city's emerging industries such as new energy, new materials and biomedicine posted robust development. The offshore wind power equipment industrial park in the city has become one of the three major wind power industrial parks in Shandong province.

A 15-square-kilometer industrial park featuring digital economic development was built, which helped foster 29 digital economy enterprises and attracted 40 projects in the fields of the industrial internet, digital economy headquarters, digital energy, digital talent, and artificial intelligence.

This year, the city plans to increase financial and technological support for digital industrial talents and enterprises to boost its high-quality development. A batch of innovation and exchange platforms are also being encouraged to be built by relying on local resources from research institutes, industrial parks and key enterprises.

According to the city's latest policies for talents, the newly-recognized national or provincial innovation platforms like technology centers and key laboratories are eligible for funding of up to 1 million yuan ($144,897) or 500,000 yuan, respectively, and college graduates working in digital industries have the chance to receive subsidies for their own start-ups.