Deputies Tan Lin, Zhang Shuyang and Shen Chunyao (front from left) exchange views before a meeting of the Guizhou delegation at the second session of the 14th National People's Congress in Beijing on Wednesday. [Photo by Feng Yongbin/China Daily]

Guizhou province is set to deepen its advantages in smart computing services amid efforts to develop its new quality productive forces, according to top provincial legislators.

The province will construct a modern industrial system, including a computing base for the whole country, Li Bingjun, governor of Guizhou and a deputy to the National People's Congress, vowed on Wednesday.

The new productive forces highlight building a modern industrial system with advanced manufacturing as the backbone, and being guided by technological innovation, Li said.

Guizhou witnessed breakthroughs in its computing service last year as the deployment of smart computing chips exceeded 76,000, up from about 800 at the beginning of the year, according to the provincial big data conference held last month.

Smart computing cards refer to chips that could be inserted into servers to provide computing services for users.

Huawei Cloud, China Telecom and other smart computing centers are based in Guizhou, making it one of the country's regions with the strongest smart computing capability.

"Gui'an New Area in Guiyang has become one of the regions with the highest concentration of super-large data centers in the world," said Ma Ningyu, mayor of the provincial capital and also an NPC deputy.

"We will continue to enhance the scale of computing power to help consolidate our leading position."

They will also strengthen the cultivation of large language models for industries and expand applications to over 20 areas such as industry, healthcare and tourism, Ma said.

China will step up efforts to build its computing power, which will give the country an edge in building up its digital economy and injecting new vitality into the intelligent transformation of its industries, according to a plan unveiled last year by ministries including the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

The essence of artificial intelligence lies in sufficient computing power; the greater the computing power, the smarter the artificial intelligence becomes. In other words, the competition in artificial intelligence is essentially a competition in smart computing, experts said.

Guiyang has sensed this importance and launched comprehensive measures in smart computing, large models for industry and data training to build a smart computing base with international competitive advantages, Ma said.

Guizhou has become a front-runner in China's big data industry since it was approved to host the country's first comprehensive big data pilot area in 2016.