Officials and company representatives at cornerstone laying foundation ceremony for the second phase of construction work on the Chinese Cloud Valley database project. Liu Yuan / for China Daily

Harbin, the capital of Heilongjiang province in China's Northeast, is the political, economic and cultural center of the region and its history and geographical location have given it a kind of exoticism and beauty.

For one thing, it is known for the culture of its various ethic groups and its proximity to Russia, but also as a crossroads for western and eastern cultures.

It is also a vast land with fertile soil, and a major agricultural area as well as a major on the northeast economic rim.

Taken together, these things make Harbin an important cultural and economic base and an ideal place for further development and opening-up.

One part of its development strategy involves an "extension to the south" and the developers have planned a new international industrial city - the Hanan Industrial New Town - for the southern part of Harbin. This project will take 20 years or so to complete, and cover a 462-square-kilometer area.

The New Town under construction is expected to be an "important industrial and cultural town with some unique features, such as new industries and more coordinated development.

The project has already attracted 7,000 enterprises, whose total output is expected to be worth 60 billion yuan ($9.4 billion) by the end of this year.

Construction plans for the new town call for the integration of enterprise culture, traditional industrial culture, and the regional culture.

A key part of the new town will be an International Data City, or "Chinese Cloud Valley". The opening phase of this project will include the "Green International Data Center Cluster". This covers a 100,000-square-meter area, with construction work lasting from May 2010 to December 2013.

Cloud Valley

The Harbin Gopha Data Technological Services Co Ltd, a subsidiary of the Gopha Group, is responsible for both the construction and operations.

The Gopha subsidiary mainly builds financial data outsourcing service centers, with an overall area of 27,700 square meters.

It has an experienced team of professionals who handle the industry's needs in datacenters and disaster recovery datacenters.

It plans to set up high-level data service centers in the Cloud Valley with an overall area of 80,000 square meters, to provide data outsourcing service sites for Internet customers and government services.

Comics and animation

Heilongjiang Comic and Animation Industry Center, established in the New Town, is taking advantage of what Heilongjiang has to offer to come up with unique products.

In its five years of development, the base has formed a national demonstration site for the following areas: animated films, online games, digital publishing, network operations, television, broadcasting, advertising, value-added services, software outsourcing, and education and training.

It now houses more than 100 animation and comics producers, some of whom have come up with award-winners.

These include Dragon Baby, Snow Baby, and Explore Earth Village, which got the Excellent Animated Feature Film Award. Snow Baby ranked among China's Top 10 Cartoons, while Explore Earth Village and the online games Contend for Dominance and Online Ghost have been exported to over 30 countries.

The base hopes to tap into the international market and, by June 2011, had seven projects with South Korea, Hong Kong, Japan, and Russia, which were worth 164.9 million yuan in all.

It has also developed its cartoon outsourcing and software R&D businesses by cooperating with the United States, Japan, Britain, South Korea, India, Singapore and Hong Kong.

Now, after five years of hectic development, the Heilongjiang Comic and Animation Industry Center has risen from nowhere to a rapidly growing cartoon center and is pulling Heilongjiang along with it.