China's northwestern regions are traditionally considered to be poor and less advanced. This is no longer true for Yinchuan, capital of the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, where the government has been making efforts to build an international model of smart city.

Yinchuan was approved to become a national pilot smart city in 2013. It is also known as the permanent site of the World Cyber Arena, an international electronic sports competition. Local officials said the city is demonstrating how a backward region can develop with the help of high technology

Guo Bochun, vice-mayor of Yinchuan, said the concept of "smart city" was created to treat the "urban diseases" during the process of urbanization, such as pollution, public security and traffic issues. But, in Yinchuan, the smart city efforts also include improvement of people's livelihood and the development of an industry chain.

"The development of a smart city leads to new industry sectors and new business models by using smart technologies such as big data," Guo said.

To achieve that, the city government has planned a smart industry park, which is expected to be completed next year.

At the same time, traditional industries are being upgraded, Guo added. One of the examples is the garment business. He said most of the cost in the traditional garment industry is in the storage, but the local Hengtian Ruyi high-tech zone has introduced a system that allows automatic tailor making, leading to zero storage.

The system scans a customer in less than a second to acquire the data about his figure, which is immediately sent back to the factory. The customer chooses the materials and designs, and the clothes are made and packaged automatically in three hours.

The system was launched on Aug 28.

Cooperating with ZTE, one of China's IT industry leaders, the Yinchuan government has designed 10 systems in its ambitious smart city plan, including government service, traffic, environmental protection and public security.

The city's big data center, starting operation in June 2015, has 10,000 servers processing data from 25 government agencies. Another 4,000 servers will be added in the planned second phase of the center.

Free WiFi access is available at more than 2,000 sites across the city, including more than 1,600 buses, nearly 700 bus stops and many tourist attractions and shopping areas. There were about 257,000 registered users by the end of July.

When tourists visit some major attractions in and around Yinchuan, they can use a smartphone app to learn how many tourists are already there and see the customer appraisal for more than 200 shops and restaurants there as reference.

The vice-major said the Yinchuan model features innovation in business models, management and technical structures "to make the smart city really smart".

(China Daily 09/07/2016 page10)