The Chinese city hardest-hit by COVID-19 in the early months of last year, Wuhan, central China's Hubei Province, has roared back to life.

It has since been among the country's 10 economically best-performing cities. Now, it is eyeing something even bigger, and the first step is to expand its technological advances.

High-tech sectors contributed to more than a quarter of Wuhan's economic growth in 2020. On the other hand, the Hubei provincial government just rolled out key national laboratories for optical, space and biological technology. 

They are set to boost its pillar industries, which are mainly high-tech economies. 

"We're preparing talents and reserved technology for targeted industries," said Xia Song, chairman of Research Center Committee of Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics. The lab is located in Wuhan's high-tech zone, better known as the Optics Valley of China. 

Over the decades, talents and innovative businesses have gathered at the country's hub for optoelectronic information and biotech industries. Two world-class industrial clusters worth trillions of yuan are under construction.

That has inspired Wuhan's largest industrial player to set its sights on building a new high-tech valley.

At the new development stage, looking at the whole industry chain but not focusing on its own sector is crucial, according to the Wuhan-based automaker Dongfeng, one of the country's top three motor manufacturing bases.

"We have to rethink the life cycle of R&D, manufacturing, consumption and service," said Tang Teng from Dongfeng's strategic planning department. "Given the local government's plan to create an auto valley in China, we will step up efforts to master core technologies to make this our edge in market competency."

Aside from alternative energy vehicles, the automakers have recently begun testing driverless taxis, and they plan to provide commercial vehicles in the coming years.

Given the large-scale manufacturing achievement, Wuhan is ambitious to build a high-tech automobile valley. 

"Electronic information and alternative energy enterprises related to vehicle networking have already clustered in the auto valley," according to Gu Xiaoyan, a researcher at Wuhan Academy of Social Sciences. 

"Now, it seeks more talents from home and abroad and further improvements in key parts of the industrial chain," Gu said. 

To keep up with the growth momentum in the years to come, it is widely believed the Wuhan government will invest in mushrooming emerging industries that feature information and biological technologies, as well as some industries of the future. And Wuhan's valleys are incubating all of this new and exciting potential.