Senior officials from inland Guizhou province come to the Silicon Valley to promote their big data comprehensive pilot zone, the first of its kind in China, hoping the preferential policies the southwest region will provide will help generate more collaborations and exchanges between Guizhou and the Silicon Valley.

At a seminar held Monday in Santa Clara, Guizhou Mayor and member of the Standing Committee of the CPC Guizhou Provincial Committee Chen Gang, said China's central government has pinned high hopes on the development of big data nationwide and chose Guizhou to start a pilot zone.

"We can explore big data sharing, data center integration, the whole industry agglomeration, besides big data flow and dissemination," said Chen, who is also director of the leading group on the construction and development of the Guizhou Big Data Comprehensive Pilot Zone.

Since Chen and his 20-member delegation arrived at the Bay Area six days ago, the team has reached out to high-tech industries in the Silicon Valley and scholars at universities such as UC Berkeley.

"They are shuffling back and forth around the Bay Area in order to meet more professionals and give out more detailed and thorough information about Guizhou," said Ren Faqiang, deputy consul general at the Chinese Consulate General in San Francisco.

In recent years, Guizhou has launched cooperation with international companies at home and abroad.

"Cloud computing and big data have been the driving force of Guizhou's economy," said Chen, adding that Alibaba, Baidu, Qualcomm, Oracle, Microsoft and Google all operate in Guizhou with a business scope ranging from unmanned vehicles, smart city and server chips to energy transmission and storage.

Guizhou started sponsoring the Guiyang International Big Data Expo two years ago, and drew more than 20,000 guests worldwide.

"If you have missed the investment opportunity in Guangdong or Zhejiang 30 years ago, by no means should you miss that of Guizhou today," said Alibaba's Jack Ma, who attended the Expo for two consecutive years.

Through its streamlined data platform - Guizhou on the Digital Cloud and the South China Data Center - Guizhou provides quality services to any big data industries that decided to open local operations.

In 2016, Qualcomm launched its local offices in Guizhou with a focus on production of high-end server chips.

"We are making more and more friends based on the shared idea that big data is the trend and will benefit the entire world," Chen said.