The big data promotional conference taking place on Nov 7 saw the signing of a cooperation agreement between Baotou and Tsinghua University on building up a big data research institute, reports Baotou Daily.

The institute will be the first institution in Baotou to focus on the big data industry, facilitating the development of Baotou into a smart city and a model city for e-commerce promotion. Also, the institute will help develop e-commerce platforms and recruit talents to make Baotou city the regional center of big data development.

The institute will be working on the planning and design for e-commerce, industrial cloud services and the application of Internet of Things, recently providing technological support to the development of the big data industry in Baotou.

Baotou, the largest industrial city of North China’s Inner Mongolia autonomous region, is seeing the development of an increasingly information-based local economy, and the local government is committed to developing the city into a smart city through developments in big data and cloud computing.

In September, Baotou was selected as one of the top 50 smart cities in China, the third time that the city has made the list, a result of the efforts it has made in developing a big data industry.

The city is also constructing a big data experience center, which will come into service next spring. It will be a first-class experience center, demonstrating and publicizing the applications of big data.

Being one of the top universities in China, Tsinghua University boasts a national engineering laboratory for e-commerce technologies. The laboratory is aimed at analyzing the current state and the future direction of e-commerce in the world, and developing experimental e-commerce platforms for employees in related fields to experience.