At a bustling national industrial park in Guiyang, the capital of Guizhou province, technicians with badges take a break for lunch in a crowded canteen.

They are a small portion of more than 30,000 people working in the Guiyang national high-tech development zone, home to some 3,000 international and domestic companies.

"Some have followed in the footsteps of big international players and large State-owned enterprises and came to Guiyang under the nation's Western Development Strategy," said Liu Qinghe, a researcher with the Guizhou Academy of Social Sciences.