A bird's-eye view of Nantong Innovation Zone. [Photo provided by Xu Congjun to en.nantong.gov.cn]

Nantong in Jiangsu province has issued a three-year action plan to drive the innovation and development of artificial intelligence.

This action plan highlights significant advancements in building high-quality datasets, fostering rapid growth in the core AI industry and achieving widespread AI integration in key sectors.

The city aims to establish numerous leading and iconic demonstration application scenarios and typical application cases, setting the groundwork for a city distinguished by AI applications, innovation, and development within the Yangtze River Delta.

The plan emphasizes accelerating the construction of several AI-focused industrial parks and service industry clusters. This includes the Nantong Economic and Technological Development Area's Nengda Science and Technology Innovation Center and AI Industrial Park, as well as Chongchuan district's AI industry platforms, with a target to establish over 15 such zones by 2028.

Efforts will also be directed toward advancing the national pilot program for the digital transformation of small and medium-sized enterprises, with the goal of establishing 300 provincial-level advanced smart factories and 20 national-level excellent smart factories by the end of 2028.

The plan calls for the acceleration of smart farm and fishery development, aiming to cultivate over 18 typical application projects in the agricultural sector by 2028. It further emphasizes the integration of AI technology into marine environment monitoring, resource development, and disaster prevention and mitigation. Additionally, there will be a focus on promoting AI integration across various fields such as energy, transportation, healthcare, urban governance and administrative services.

By 2028, Nantong aims to establish five AI innovation consortia, three innovation platforms, and implement 20 AI technology research and development projects. The plan also targets cultivating at least 30 model and algorithm companies, developing 90 vertical models and intelligent agents and accumulating 150 high-quality datasets and corpora by 2028.