Demonstration areas that undergo industrial transformation and technological upgrades will receive government support in cultivating new quality productive forces, according to Tong Zhangshun, director-general of the Department of Regional Revitalization of the National Development and Reform Commission.

He added that while demonstration areas have developed 11 mega industrial clusters, including those in engineering machinery, equipment manufacturing, non-ferrous metal, biomedicine, new energy and new materials, some areas are still dominated by traditional industries.

As a heavy industry base in South China, Shaoguan is devoted to advancing its iron, steel and non-ferrous metal industries using technology, said Chen Shaorong, Party secretary of Shaoguan.

Chen Zhiqing, the mayor of Shaoguan, said the city is also cultivating emerging industries and leveraging scientific and technological innovation.

The city is developing its data industry along the full industrial chain as it builds the Shaoguan data center cluster of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area national hub node in the integrated nationwide computing power network, he said.

More than 60 projects related to the Shaoguan data center cluster have been signed, with a total investment of 100 billion yuan ($13.85 billion), including those with the country's four major telecommunications operators and tech giants such as Tencent and Ali Cloud.

The Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area computing power scheduling center in Shaoguan has been established and connected to six supercomputing, intelligent computing and cloud computing centers in the area.

The Shaoguan data center cluster is set to have 500,000 standard server racks by 2025.