Zhaomu Mountain area in Chongqing Liangjiang New Area. [Photo by Chen Wensen]

At Guangdianyuan Station of Line Six of Chongqing Rail Transit, which is neither an interchange station nor near a mass residential area, large shopping mall or other attraction, nearly 50,000 people come in and out every day, a passenger flow comparable to large interchange stations like Chongqing North Station.

Guangdianyuan is a typical "tidal station", with outbound traffic in the morning peak hour accounting for 72% of the day's outbound traffic and inbound traffic in the evening peak accounting for 54% of the day's inbound traffic. The hourly flow of passengers at the station during peak hours can be as high as 19,000.

Why is the station so busy? Because it connects to the Zhaomu Mountain area, which is a spectacular "city within a city" with hundreds of buildings housing more than 5,000 companies in the software and information technology industries that employ more than 80,000 people and account for about a quarter of the city's total software and information service industry.

Software and information service enterprises are increasingly gathering in the Zhaomu Mountain area and are becoming the Zhaomu Mountain Phenomenon, a widely discussed topic by industry players.

Two action plans of the same origin and spirit

The Zhaomu Mountain Phenomenon is closely related to two action plans that Chongqing is making great efforts to implement.

"The software and information service industry is a fundamental, strategic and pioneering industry related to the overall situation of national economic and social development, and has an important supporting and leading role in economic and social development," said Zhao Gang, an official of the Municipal Economic and Information Commission. According to Zhao, the software and information service industry accounts for nearly nine percent of China's GDP, surging from less than six percent in 2014.

Aiming at this development trend, in recent years Chongqing has implemented an action plan for an innovation-driven development strategy led by big data and intelligence, and has created a broad market for the development of software and information services through the construction of a smart manufacturing base and smart city.

To build a smart manufacturing base, Chongqing is focusing on research and development and innovation, as well as complementing the industry chain. It is focusing on building an industry of chips, screens, devices, core parts, and the Internet of Things (IoT), promoting deep integration of the digital economy and the real economy, and cultivating new momentum for economic development.

So far, Chongqing has implemented more than 4,800 intelligent transformation projects, and built 734 digital workshops and 127 smart factories, with the productivity of demonstration projects increasing by 58.9 percent. A total of 1,704 above-scale core industry enterprises in the digital economy have gathered here, and the municipality's added value of the digital economy surged by an average annual growth rate of 16 percent.

To build a smart city, Chongqing is actively building a cluster of all elements covering the cloud platform, networking, big data, computing power, and usage and creating a scenario covering housing, industry, amusement, and shopping. Chongqing is currently leading the country in smart city construction, and has been selected as one of the top 10 demonstration cases of new smart city and top 10 regional practices of new smart city.

With the construction of a smart manufacturing base and smart city, a large number of software and information service enterprises have emerged. One of the major clusters of these enterprises is in the Zhaomu Mountain area.

Statistics show that in the first seven months of this year, the scale of the software and information service industry in Liangjiang New Area reached 47.9 billion yuan ($6.62 billion), accounting for about 24.6 percent of the related figure for all of Chongqing. According to Hu Jingbing, Director of the Industry Promotion Bureau of Liangjiang New Area, the majority of software and information service industries in the New Area are located in the Zhaomu Mountain area.

In addition to the big data intelligence-led innovation-driven development strategic action plan, Chongqing has made another innovation action plan named Man Tianxing (meaning stars in the sky), which gives a strong impetus to the development of its software and information service industry.

The Man Tianxing plan was launched this July, and was followed by another promotion meeting in October to accelerate the high-quality development of software and information services. Two meetings held within three months revealed the significance of the plan.

As the Man Tianxing plan was deployed, Chongqing saw its software business revenue grow by 12.6 percent year-on-year with 30,000 new employees, more than 200 new key projects, and more than 1,870 newly registered enterprises arriving from January to September this year.

"We have taken root in the action plan and will grow and develop under the frame of the Man Tianxing plan." said Wang Xiaohu, President of GYMD Digital Technology Co., Ltd.

In Wang's opinion, the two action plans are of the same origin and spirit. The first one nurtured the idea of building a smart manufacturing base and smart city, and the second continues to focus on that target and increasing public interest by pointing to office buildings and flourishing industries.

"With the implementation of these two action plans, Chongqing provides sufficient 'sunshine', 'air' and 'soil' for the development of the software and information service industry," Zhao said.

Why enterprises gather in the Zhaomu Mountain Area

This September, Changan CS75 PLUS topped the SUV sales chart by selling 17,000 units. It is widely believed that the success is largely because of the car's intelligent connection system.

Tinnove, located in the Zhaomu Mountain area, is the developer of this system.

The company neighbors GYMD Digital Technology Co., Ltd, whose Geega Industrial Internet Platform has been listed as a "2021 Industrial Internet Platform Pilot Demonstration Project" by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and become a benchmark for the integrated development of the Industrial Internet in the Chengdu-Chongqing region.

In the Zhaomu Mountain area, outstanding software and information service enterprises like GYMD Digital Technology Co., Ltd and Tinnove can be found everywhere. For example, Mashang Consumer Finance owns the largest number of patents in Chongqing's financial industry and ranks first in the country's consumer finance industry, Epet was selected as one of Hurun China's Cheetah Enterprises in 2020, and Litosim has developed industrial simulation software at an international advanced level.

Why do these enterprises gather in the Zhaomu Mountain area? In the opinion of Liu Qian, secretary-general of the Chongqing Software Industry Association, the foremost reason is that there is a complete range of industries and enriched application scenarios, creating a large market demand.

So far, Liangjiang New Area has formed advanced manufacturing clusters such as automobiles, electronic information, equipment manufacturing, and biomedicine, which provide rich application scenarios for software and information service enterprises.

To make these scenarios function at full play in attracting and nurturing enterprises and driving industries, Liangjiang New Area has established a special working mechanism to promote the connection of the departments and enterprises, and has implemented hundreds of scenario application projects in the field of software and information services in recent years.

Given the rich application scenarios, it only took Tinnove four years to become the supplier for over 100 models, including the Changan CS75 PLUS.

The software and information service industry is a technology-intensive industry, with talents and research resources as key factors, which in turn is one of the greatest advantages of the Zhaomu Mountain area.

In the Zhaomu Mountain area, there are nearly 70 general research platforms, two public service platforms, eight innovative R&D platforms, and nearly 50 new R&D institutions.

Liangjiang New Area has also built 10 training bases for software and information service talents, which can train 18,000 people every year.

In addition, the ample and high-quality buildings in the Zhaomu Mountain area and the comprehensive supporting policies of Liangjiang New Area have strongly attracted software and information service companies. To date, Liangjiang New Area has built over 3.8 million square meters of buildings for the software and information service industry, and has launched about one million square meters of talent flats and public rental housing.

To become the "brightest star"

Convinced by the huge support and leading role of the software and information service industry in economic development, Chongqing and Liangjiang are keen on the development of this industry and are determined to reach even higher.

It is mentioned in the 14th Five-Year Plan of high-quality development of Chongqing's software industry that the municipality is to build China's software city during that period

The Man Tianxing plan further clarifies the target by proposing that by 2025 Chongqing will enter the first tier in terms of its overall development of the software and information service industry. The promotion meeting held in October stressed that the software and information service industry should be a priority of key industrial development.

According to the Man Tianxing Plan, by 2025 Chongqing will put two million square meters of stock building area into use, add tens of thousands of new software and information service enterprises and 200,000 new employees, increase revenue by 100 billion yuan, and reach a total output value of 500 billion yuan.

The New Area, which is already taking shape, is determined to be the "brightest star".

Earlier this year, Liangjiang New Area released an action plan to promote the software and information service industry, proposing that by 2025, Liangjiang New Area will add 1.1 million square meters of new software and information service enterprise office space, more than 4,000 new enterprises, 110,000 new employees, strive to increase revenue by more than 50 billion yuan, and reach a total industry scale of more than 200 billion yuan.

That means Liangjiang New Area will account for more than 50% of Chongqing's new office space for the software and information service industry, 40% of Chongqing's new enterprises, more than half of Chongqing's new employees, and half of Chongqing's new business revenue.

To achieve the goal, Liangjiang New Area has targeted the five major development directions of industrial software, automotive software, emerging platform software, industry application software and digital content, and has proposed the six special actions of office building optimization, market player cultivation, innovation leading, application leading, talent attraction and cultivation, and ecological improvement.

The Zhaomu Mountain area is undoubtedly the main vehicle for the " brightest star". The reason for this is simple.

The amplifying effect of the clustering of enterprises in a region will further accelerate the convergence of upstream and downstream enterprises and various resources. Developed countries and developed regions in China share the same path of high-quality development. Internationally, Silicon Valley in the US is home to hundreds of global IT giants and countless small and medium-sized high-tech companies. Domestically, Beijing's Zhongguancun is home to some of the country's top digital economy companies, and Wuhan's Optics Valley houses many innovative companies in central China.

In order to support significant growth of the software and information service industry in the Zhaomu Mountain area, Liangjiang New Area has recently issued special policies that will stimulate growth in 10 ways, including optimizing industrial development vehicles, encouraging industrial ecological clustering, vitalizing talent teams, and increasing financial support.

A Zhaomu Mountain with a growing number of high-quality projects and enterprises, and increasing vitality is taking shape. It is believed that in time the "Zhaomu Mountain Phenomenon" will become a new example of high-quality development in China's software and information service industry.