Tibet sees GDP growth, empowered by emerging sectors

The gross domestic product (GDP) of southwest China’s Tibet Autonomous Region totaled 130.8 billion yuan (about 19.5 billion U.S. dollars) in the first three quarters of the year, up 6.3 percent year on year, local authorities said.

Seven emerging industries empowered the region’s economy, including plateau biology, tourism and culture, green industries, clean energy, modern services, border trade logistics, and the high-tech and digital industry, according to the regional bureau of statistics and the Tibet survey office under the National Bureau of Statistics.

These industries achieved an added value of 28.9 billion yuan from January to September, with the high-tech and digital industry rising by 37 percent from the same period of last year and the plateau bio-industry up 31.6 percent.

The pharmaceutical industry is another pillar in the region’s industrial production.

In the Jan.-Sept. period, the added value of major industries in Tibet rose by 7.1 percent compared with the first nine months of last year, of which pharmaceuticals posted a surging year-on-year growth of 36.6 percent.

The Ningsuan Technology Group is one of the major enterprises that facilitate the development of Tibet’s emerging sectors. It is promoting the construction of a cloud computing data center, also as its operator.

The data center is located in a high-tech zone of the regional capital city of Lhasa, making it the highest-altitude data center in the world.

With a total planned investment of 11.8 billion yuan, the project will provide services in areas such as video rendering, autonomous driving, and distance-learning data backup.

The first phase of the project will start operation in 2021. After the completion of three phases, the data center will have 70,000 machine cabinets and annual revenue of 10 billion yuan, said Jiang Ning, president of the company.

Jiang said the company has also established an innovation and business start-up platform to actively incubate local science and technology enterprises.

With the recovery of the tourism market, the consumer goods market is also picking up.

In September, Tibet’s reception of tourists increased by 12.1 percent year on year, and the region achieved a total retail sales of consumer goods worth 7.96 billion yuan, up by 11.4 percent year on year, which was also 8.1 percentage points higher than the national growth rate.

Data also show that during the first three quarters, the added value of Tibet’s primary, secondary, and tertiary industries increased by 1.5 percent, 12.9 percent, and 3.1 percent, respectively, year on year.

Xinhua