China's computing power scale is growing at 30 percent annually with its total power ranking the second in the world, a senior official from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said on Wednesday.

"As a new form of productivity in the digital economy era, computing power has become an important support for high-quality economic and social development," said Zhao Zhiguo, chief engineer at MIIT.

Zhao said that the country's comprehensive supply of computing power is growing at a fast pace, with 39 percent of the facilities located in central and western area, and over 100 trunk fiber-optic cables are connected to those hub nodes to ensure effective internet connection. 

Based on this computing power supply, China's been developing cutting-edge technologies such as the training and deduction of large language models, semiconductors, and multi-dimensional heterogeneous computing technology, according to Zhao.

He added that the strong and solid foundation of computing power had empowered scientific research in biomedicine, astronomy and geography to yield fruitful results, and that people's lives are enhanced as a result of the development of autonomous driving and film-making rendering, technologies which are based on computing power. 

As the demand for the development of general artificial intelligence continues to increase, Zhao said that the ministry would enhance the high-quality development of the country's computing power from its infrastructure construction, key technology breakthroughs, and empower its industrial application value.

Zhao gave this report as the country is seeing a stable development in its industrial economy. China's value-added industrial output went up 3.8 percent year on year in the first half of 2023, an 0.8-percentage increase compared with that in the first quarter, according to Zhao.

In June alone, industrial output rose 4.4 percent year on year, faster than the 3.5-percent growth registered in May, data released by the National Bureau of Statistics on Monday shows.