While most industrial zones around China focus on manufacturing, the city of Changsha has taken a different path by building a video cultural and creative industries zone right in the center of the town, covering an area of 15 square kilometers.

China (Changsha) Malanshan Video Cultural and Creative Industry Park, also known as Malanshan V Zone, was established in 2017. During that year, eight of the top 10 variety shows with more than 1 billion hits in China came from Malanshan.

Today, more than 3,000 companies are located in the zone. Malanshan has provided cloud computing services – infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS) in the park. The zone has also attracted leading companies in 5G technology, cloud computing, AI and blockchain. These companies create a cluster effect within the zone, meaning they can be each other's clients and service providers.

Last year, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television's 5G High-tech Video Multi-scene Application Laboratory settled down in Malanshan. This 5G laboratory is the first national key laboratory of video. At the same time, it has established a 5G application industry alliance with Huawei, Baidu, Alibaba and other tech giants.

In Malanshan, "5G + cloud" is used in various scenarios, giving new vitality to video content production. Here, video creative talent applied 4K cloud production and broadcasting technology to large-scale variety shows for the first time and present the old video material to the audience clearly.

Xia Tian from Changsha Hongda VR Info Tech in Malanshan V Zone said, her company focuses on VR industrial applications. "We entered the Malanshan video zone last year. We benefit from the zone's favorable policies for tech companies, and we can also find upstream and downstream partners," she said.

Fang Qian, who is in charge of Changsha Malanshan Video Industrial Zone, said that in 2020, even during the pandemic, the zone's revenue rose 30 percent from 2019 to above 43 billion yuan. Malanshan V Zone attracted 794 companies last year and plans to attract 1,000 more this year.

Changsha's efforts in building Malanshan V Zone are in line with China's strategy of becoming an innovative country. The zone is designed to be a first-class hub for cultural and creative content production, digital production and copyright trading in China, with global competitiveness.