The relatively undeveloped city of Guiyang, Guizhou province says it wants to be a stand-out in China with its big data business in the near future, and plans to become a "big data valley" and already has many firsts in the field.

The comment came from city authorities, on May 26, at a big data expo in the city that is still going on. They explained that they began taking the lead by starting a citywide free Wi-Fi project earlier this year, then followed that with the opening of the nation's first big data laboratory, a big data public site, and big data exchange center.

As if to prove them right, China's Premier Li Keqiang sent a single congratulatory letter for the Guiyang International Big Data Expo, which opened on May 26, saying, "Data is a fundamental resource and an important productive force."

The city sees big data as a decisive choice in economic growth and ecological protection and a way to take the lead in urbanization by using it to solve problems in traffic, food and healthcare and it has preferential policies for related entrepreneurs, and has a pleasant environment and resources to attract some top companies with new projects.

Examples of these are JD.com, one of China's largest B2C online retailers; CBC, an investment company in the telecommunications, media and technology sectors; Infobird, a leading call center and cloud computing service provider; and Alibaba, a Chinese e-commerce company.

Meanwhile, the expo, with a theme of "Big Data Security and Development in the Era of Internet Plus", has attracted more than 300 well-known companies from China and abroad, including Huawei, Alibaba, Lenovo, Google, HP and Microsoft, to display their products and services on a 60,000-square-meter area.

They have been joined at the festival by leaders from the Internet era, such as Jack Ma, chairman of the Alibaba Group, Zhou Hongyi, chairman of the Internet security company Qihoo, and Terry Guo, chairman of Foxconn, one of the world's largest electronics contractor manufacturer.