At a press conference for the 2026 Shanghai Cooperation Organization Digital Economy Forum held on August 18, Zhang Yingchun, a Standing Committee member of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region Party Committee and Executive Vice Chairman of the region, highlighted that hosting the forum in Xinjiang is a strategic move tied to the Silk Road Economic Belt and deeper SCO cooperation.
Zhang stated that this presents a historic opportunity for Xinjiang to enhance its digital economy, achieve high-quality development, and elevate its overall regional profile. Moving forward, the focus will be on maximizing the forum's spillover effects to foster collaboration and growth, transforming Xinjiang's geographic, resource, and platform advantages into powerful drivers for high-quality digital economic development.
The Vice Chairman emphasized three key areas of responsibility and three corresponding breakthroughs. First, in terms of political responsibility, Xinjiang aims to contribute to China's participation in global digital governance and expand international digital cooperation.
Second, regarding international collaboration, Xinjiang will uphold the Shanghai Spirit, leveraging the forum to prepare ministerial closed-door meetings and activities around four main themes: digital connectivity, digital trade and corridor economies, smart industry applications, and digital governance and capacity building. The goal is to produce an annual key cooperation list for SCO digital economy and facilitate the implementation of several small-scale, high-impact livelihood projects, ensuring digital cooperation benefits people across all member states.
Third, for regional development, Xinjiang will use the forum to build a digital Silk Road, capitalizing on the combined effects of pilot free trade zones, comprehensive bonded areas, and development and opening-up pilot zones. This approach aims to connect physical logistics channels with digital information corridors, supporting the domestic and international dual circulation strategy and accelerating the establishment of a new development paradigm.
Focusing on key areas and weak links in digital economic development, Xinjiang will pursue three specific breakthroughs. In digital infrastructure connectivity, the plan includes establishing computing power clusters in Urumqi and other areas, scientifically planning large-scale AI computing clusters with tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of cards. This will deepen participation in the East-Data-West-Computing project, including western training, rendering, and storage, while promoting the export of computing power and token data (词元出海) to expand market space and build a computing hub for Central Asia and broader Eurasian markets. Additionally, efforts will enhance cross-border communication networks, improving the service capacity of 28 international fiber-optic cables and 16 communication channels, while seeking faster approval for international communication business entry/exit hubs and national internet backbone direct connection points to strengthen digital infrastructure for the Belt and Road Initiative.
In digital standards alignment, Xinjiang will leverage the China-Central Asia cooperation mechanism to deepen regional governance collaboration. Plans include establishing a digital standards promotion alliance, conducting regular outreach, technical training, and aligning with mainstream certification systems to position Chinese digital standards as a priority reference for Central Asian countries' infrastructure development.
Finally, in digital-industrial integration, Xinjiang will deepen applications of artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, and industrial internet technologies in areas such as agricultural water conservation, energy dispatch, mining safety, manufacturing upgrades, cultural tourism, and urban governance. The region will promote digital farmland, 5G factories, and smart mines, driving full-chain digital transformation of distinctive industries like cotton and new energy, allowing new quality productive forces to better empower the real economy.