An initiative to speed up development in southwest China from Sichuan Province down through Guizhou and Guangxi is underway. The "New Pathway Linking Land and Sea in the West" initiative - a land-sea corridor - is set to boost trade and investment in the region and digital technology is behind the effort.
Guiyang, the capital of Guizhou, is a major stop along this "pathway" and digital technology is empowering its logistics industry. One such tech company based there is Man Bang Logistics Data Hub, a platform to match goods and trucks.
Three years in the running, the hub has seen 610,000 orders matched. It has 7 million registered drivers, and nearly 2.3 million goods sellers. Its businesses cover nearly 340 cities and 110,000 transportation routes.
"The aching point in the past was that it was hard for goods and vans to match. We wrote down the information of goods that were waiting to be delivered, on the blackboard, and broadcast the information for drivers to find them. Big data has made the process much easier," said Wang Lincheng, public relations manager at the Man Bang group.
"Previously to match a van of goods took more than two days, but now, it happens in few hours. A morning is what it takes to match and load a whole truck," he added.
Guiyang also now boasts of the country's big data experimental center. The center enables the building of "smart cities" and facilitates the trade of local specialties such as spices and kiwi fruits.
"Our center has a platform for the trading of spices. Now all major indices in the trade of spices globally are issued here," said National Big Data Experimental Center's Wang Xiaoming.
Six hundred kilometers south, Nanning, the capital city of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, is home to a booming digital economy. Industry heavyweights such as Huawei, Alibaba and Tencent have established branches there. The city now aims to become a hub for trade and finance between China and Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries.
Nanning is also dedicated to the application of industrial data and smart solutions of companies. The city has 103 digital projects under construction, attracting investment of more than 30 billion yuan. More than 6,000 firms there are in the digital industry.