Dongguan has officially released the "Dongguan Accelerating the Construction of an 'AI+' City Implementation Plan (2026-2030)", accompanied by a series of supporting policies. This initiative establishes a comprehensive support system encompassing computing power, data, models, major platforms, industrial clusters, talent, scenarios, and security. The plan systematically orchestrates the entire chain of AI technological innovation, industrial development, and industry application, aiming to empower all sectors comprehensively and continuously, supporting the city's strategic goal of "Smart Innovation, Quality Products, and Harmonious Livable Living".
As the first systematic top-level design document for coordinating the city's AI urban construction, the plan leverages Dongguan's unique advantages: its robust manufacturing base, massive data resources, and diverse application scenarios. It clearly outlines a phased development roadmap. By 2028, AI is expected to deeply integrate with key areas such as traditional industries, emerging sectors, people's livelihoods, and government services. The city aims to host no fewer than 800 AI-related enterprises, launch at least 300 benchmark "AI+" application scenarios, and achieve an industry scale exceeding 100 billion yuan. By 2030, the goal is for AI to fully empower urban development, with a penetration rate of over 90% for next-generation smart terminals and intelligent agent applications, and an industry scale surpassing 150 billion yuan. The policy covers 20 key areas, including basic scientific research, industrial transformation and upgrading, universal public services, and modern urban governance, building a comprehensive, multi-layered, and closed-loop "AI+" integrated application system to remove bottlenecks in technology deployment, industrial conversion, scenario expansion, and factor supply.
Empowering transformation of traditional industries and fostering new momentum for emerging sectors
Manufacturing is the core of Dongguan, and the Plan makes industrial intelligence a key focus, integrating AI across the entire chain of the real economy. For upgrading traditional industries, targeting advantage sectors like textiles and apparel, food and beverages, furniture, toys, papermaking, packaging and printing, chemicals, and molds, Dongguan will build vertical general models and intelligent agents for production manufacturing and supply chain management. It will promote models for clothing and apparel to empower fabric R&D, production line transformation, and IP design, creating benchmarks for intelligent transformation in areas like Dalang's wool textiles, Humen's fashion apparel, and Chashan's trendy toys. The plan also supports upgrading the China International Cartoon & Animation Festival with an "AI + Toys and Trendy Toys" model.
For accelerating breakthroughs in emerging industries, in advanced manufacturing and strategic emerging sectors, the plan promotes the intelligent upgrade of all industrial factors, aiming for over 70% of industrial enterprises above a designated size to use AI technology for production and manufacturing by 2028. Focusing on core tracks such as smart terminals, new materials, biomedicine, new energy, integrated circuits, low-altitude economy, intelligent robots, and connected vehicles, the city will build a number of pilot-scale testing platforms and industry empowerment centers. The Plan clearly states it will strive to cultivate world-class AI terminal industry clusters, support enterprises in exploring new product forms and interaction models, and rely on the National AI Application Pilot-Scale Testing Base to clear the path from pilot testing to mass production. The goal is to create over 100 popular terminal products by 2028 and promote the global expansion of Dongguan-made AI terminal products. Concurrently, leveraging major scientific facilities like the China Spallation Neutron Source and the Advanced Attosecond Laser, along with research platforms such as the Great Bay University, Dongguan University of Technology, and the Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Dongguan will deploy "AI+" for scientific research, building multimodal scientific datasets, cultivating 20 intelligent agents for research, and supporting leading enterprises in forming innovation consortia to strengthen the foundational supply of AI technology.
Focusing on improving people's livelihoods and upgrading life experiences across all scenarios
The Plan insists on using intelligent technology for the people, deeply integrating AI into key livelihood areas like healthcare, education, elderly care, and cultural tourism to ensure shared development benefits. In the healthcare sector, Dongguan will build a high-quality city-level health data set and a trusted data space, focusing on high-incidence diseases in the Lingnan region and the health needs of key populations to create a batch of clinical specialist intelligent agent applications. By 2030, secondary and above hospitals will adopt applications like intelligent medical imaging diagnosis, clinical decision support, and prescription review in a tiered manner. Tertiary hospitals, represented by Dongguan People's Hospital, will build an AI application matrix covering 40 scenarios, including assisted diagnosis, intelligent nursing, and research analysis, achieving a clinical AI penetration rate exceeding 30%. In education, AI will be integrated into high-frequency scenarios like instructional design, classroom implementation, and homework grading. The city will develop intelligent learning companions and digital tutors adapted to local textbooks, build student competency maps and learning analytics systems, support schools like Dongguan Middle School and Songshan Lake Future School in building smart campuses, and create a number of benchmark "AI + Education" schools. In elderly care and childcare, the focus will be on developing age-appropriate intelligent care products and AI-assisted childcare assistants. In cultural tourism, applications like smart scenic spot guides, digital museums, and itinerary customization will be built, promoting the integration of AI with intangible cultural heritage and folk customs, and supporting venues like R&A Park, Dongguan Central Park, and Songshan Lake Scenic Area in becoming city-level "AI + Cultural Tourism" consumption landmarks.
Deepening government services and comprehensively improving urban governance efficiency
By reshaping the city's operational system with AI, the Plan coordinates the digital upgrade of urban management, government services, emergency response, and rural revitalization to enhance the precision and intelligence of urban governance. In government services, it will promote the use of applications like government intelligent agents, digital employees, and assistant robots, upgrade the intelligent service capabilities of the 12345 hotline, and create a "Hongmeng AI Smart Service Experience Zone" in the city's main service hall, extending intelligent customer service and pre-approval capabilities to grassroots levels. For urban governance, the plan will build a public safety governance system integrating natural persons, digital humans, and intelligent robots, establish a city-level intelligent hub and an AI service platform for urban operation management, deploy a unified urban risk monitoring and early warning model, and advance the intelligent transformation and smart maintenance of municipal and transportation infrastructure. In the areas of emergency management and rural revitalization, the plan involves constructing emergency AI safety supervision platforms in high-risk areas like industrial parks and reservoirs, promoting intelligent inspection robots, and advancing the digital and intelligent upgrade of "three resources" (funds, assets, resources) supervision, living environments, and specialty crop cultivation in villages. It will also explore the creation of "AI+" model villages and communities, empower intelligent breeding of lychee and bananas and marine aquaculture, and accelerate the cultivation of new business forms like the pet economy and smart agriculture.
Comprehensive factor support to safeguard development and unleash new momentum for open cooperation
To ensure the Plan's implementation, the Dongguan Development and Reform Bureau has simultaneously released "Several Measures to Accelerate the Construction of an 'AI+' City in Dongguan," proposing 16 supporting measures and detailing specific actions and responsibilities. Regarding strengthening computing power and infrastructure support, the measures aim to solidify the intelligent computing power infrastructure base, targeting a self-built computing power scale of over 50,000 P by 2030. They will promote the expansion and upgrade of the city-level computing power scheduling platform and establish a city-level public computing power pool to provide inclusive computing power supply for market entities. On the industrial side, the city will accelerate the development of the computing power server industry, plan and build a city-level computing power server industrial park, cultivate a number of "specialized and new" and "single champion" enterprises, and support high-quality companies in integrating into domestic and international computing power facility supply chains. For innovation carrier construction, Dongguan will plan a number of professional AI industrial parks, support the transformation and upgrade of existing parks into innovative office or supporting parks, and encourage towns and sub-districts (parks) to leverage their industrial advantages to create distinctive spaces. Furthermore, the city will build a high-standard AI pilot-scale testing base, focusing on common technical challenges in AI empowering mobile terminals and advanced manufacturing, consolidating general support capabilities. It will promote the aggregation and synergy of terminal industry data and talent resources at the base, introduce supporting policies to guide social capital participation, and deepen cooperation with the China-ASEAN AI Application Cooperation Center and the World AI Conference to help the base's achievements "go global."
Strengthening data and innovation elements to activate core momentum
Dongguan is focusing on activating core innovation elements like data and algorithms to inject endogenous power into industrial development. In terms of data resource development and utilization, it will promote the desensitization and authorized operation of public data, guide enterprises and industry associations to take the lead in creating industry datasets, and smooth the data element circulation channels. In the algorithm and model field, the city will accelerate the construction of the city-level AI General Model Center, promote the development of 50 vertical domain general models, and foster synergistic innovation among algorithms, models, and intelligent agents. Concurrently, Dongguan will actively lay out and cultivate the token economy, clearing the "data-model-application-transaction" chain, and promoting bidirectional empowerment between "manufacturing scenarios + tokens." It will develop one-stop general model and token calling services, plan the construction of a token factory project, and cultivate a number of token innovation enterprises.
Building an industrial and application ecosystem to create a thriving market
Focusing on industrial deployment and scenario expansion, Dongguan will build a vibrant AI application and industrial ecosystem through efforts in scenario creation, ecosystem cultivation, and spatial layout. For scenario construction, it will create benchmark AI application scenarios, regularly release lists of AI application scenarios, continuously identify scenario demands, technical capabilities, and implementation cases, and strive to launch over 100 high-value application scenarios by 2028, establishing at least 5 city-level AI empowerment centers. For the innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem, it will support towns and sub-districts (parks) like Binhaiwan, Songshan Lake, and Wanjiang in creating a number of professional OPC communities, accelerating the construction of a city-level "model-data resonance" innovation space. For cultivating the AI terminal industry, Dongguan will enrich the supply of intelligent products, compile and regularly publish a catalog of smart terminal products, and encourage administrative units and leading enterprises to open scenarios for pilot innovation. It will guide industrial funds and bank credit resources towards the smart terminal industry, while increasing the promotion of Dongguan-made "Smart Innovation, Quality Products" to enhance the market influence of Dongguan's AI terminal products both domestically and internationally. In terms of industrial spatial layout, Dongguan will strengthen AI industry clusters, creating a pattern of city-wide coordination and differentiated development. Binhaiwan will focus on the AI terminal industry, relying on the AI application pilot-scale testing base, and build a full-area AI industry cluster. Songshan Lake will focus on tracks like "AI+" new materials, embodied robots, and advanced manufacturing, leveraging the General Model Center and planned computing power projects to become the city's computing power and model base. Dongkeng and Shatian will focus on the AI server industry, building large-scale industrial clusters. Wanjiang and Nancheng will leverage the pilot national data industry cluster zone to build a high-standard data industry park. Other towns and sub-districts will develop niche areas based on their own endowments, forming a city-wide interconnected industrial landscape.
Strengthening talent and open cooperation to connect internal and external resources
Industrial development relies on talent support and open collaboration. The measures also make systematic deployments in talent cultivation and regional cooperation. In talent cultivation, Dongguan will offer "AI+" interdisciplinary courses, targeting the training of urgently needed skills like algorithm engineers and data annotators. It will regularly conduct AI knowledge popularization and training initiatives "entering industrial parks, enterprises, and communities" to solidify the industry's talent base. In terms of open cooperation, within the province, it will deepen industrial collaboration with Shenzhen, promoting deep linkage with Shaoguan's computing power resources, Guangzhou's software industry, and Foshan's home appliance industry. Outside the province, it will strengthen cooperation with cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, and Nanning, while expanding exchanges and cooperation in the AI field with the Hong Kong and Macao Special Administrative Regions and overseas, connecting high-quality domestic and international resources in all directions.
Building robust mechanisms and security safeguards to ensure long-term development
To ensure the long-term effectiveness of various measures, Dongguan will simultaneously establish a sound working mechanism and security governance system to safeguard the "AI+" city construction. For the working mechanism, a "one industry, one list" promotion mechanism will be established, where each industry's competent department annually compiles "five lists": policy list, scenario list, product list, project list, and technology list, accompanied by targeted supportive measures. In project management, a city-level key project database for the entire AI field will be established, following the principle of "implementing a batch, preparing a batch, reserving a batch, and planning a batch." A contact person system for key projects will be implemented to regularly coordinate and resolve bottlenecks and difficulties in project implementation. On the security front, the city will implement tiered and classified AI supervision, refine the technical monitoring, risk early warning, and emergency response systems, accelerate the construction of a model security testing ground, and build a governance pattern involving multiple stakeholders to secure the bottom line of AI safety development. Moving forward, Dongguan will fully leverage its advantages of rich manufacturing scenarios and complete industrial supporting facilities, using scenarios to drive technology deployment and industry to support scenario iteration. It will strive to make the "AI+" city construction a tangible success, providing replicable and scalable "Dongguan Experience" for the intelligent transformation of manufacturing cities across the province and the country.
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