Putuo District in Shanghai and Yangzhou City in Jiangsu Province have launched a joint initiative to build a national data industry cluster.
Building on a previous memorandum of cooperation, the two sides will deepen collaboration in five key areas, namely digital infrastructure, data elements, industrial ecosystems, application scenarios, and talent cultivation.
Putuo’s digital economy landscape is expanding rapidly. In April this year, Shanghai issued a document supporting Putuo District to focus on data industry coordination along the Shanghai‑Nanjing innovation belt, and to implement the pilot construction of a national data industry cluster in the Zhenru sub‑center.
Putuo is accelerating the development of a full‑chain system covering fundamental research, technology transfer, industrial agglomeration and ecological collaboration. The district aims to achieve annual data enterprise revenue of 100 billion yuan (US$14.75 billion) in the pilot area by 2028, and to nurture 50 high‑growth data companies.
High‑quality data supply and circulation are essential for better application of digital technologies. Last September, the Haina Digital Innovation Center became operational, and new R&D institutions such as the Shanghai Haina Engineering Institute have since moved in, opening public resources, including technology verification, standard setting, and outcome commercialization, to data enterprises.
With the foundation in place, data also needs to find practical applications across industries. Putuo has identified four specialized tracks for the data industry: deep intelligence, digital advertising, data security, and digital energy. This enables deep integration of data with specific industrial scenarios, unleashing multiplier effects.
Last year, the data and government service cooperation mechanism for the Shanghai‑Nanjing Industrial Innovation Belt was launched. Seven replicable pilot projects have been cultivated, and high‑quality datasets have been jointly developed.
The new cooperation with Yangzhou pushes this synergy to a deeper level. Yangzhou is home to Tencent’s largest self‑built computing centre in East China. Relying on Yangzhou’s Canal AI Innovation Community, the Yangtze River Delta AI Proving Ground, and Putuo’s sector‑specific high‑quality datasets, the two sides will advance their collaboration from isolated projects to a systematic, ecosystem‑based phase of coordinated development.
