Baidu's cloud computing center in Yangquan is a major force supporting the city's digital economy. [Photo by Han Wancheng for China Daily]

Yangquan, a major coal-mining city in the east of Shanxi, is setting an example on using digitalization to upgrade traditional industries and foster new growth engines for the province.

During the annual sessions of the Shanxi People's Congress and the Shanxi Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference held in January and the provincial conference on economic affairs held in December, Shanxi's authorities cited Yangquan as an example in developing the digital economy.

In Yangquan, the city government is mapping out a growth model driven by the digital economy, with a focus on areas including digital infrastructure development, digital industrialization and smart city management.

For digital industrialization, the highlights are on both upgrading traditional industries and cultivating new industries for the development of digital technologies.

One example of digital industrialization is Huayang New Materials Technologies Group. It launched a 5G-connected, intelligent coal-mining shaft in June 2020.

"This was the world's first coal-mining shaft equipped with a 5G network," said Dai Liangjun, a worker at the Huayang coal mine. "With the network reaching a depth of more than 500 meters under the ground, we have basically realized automation for coal cutting and conveying, greatly improving efficiency and safety."

He explained that the automatic tunnel boring machine for coal cutting can now proceed at a speed of about 50 meters a day, a record in the country.

To date, Yangquan boasts two smart coal mines and 78 intelligent coal-mining shafts.

Digitalization is also applied to the machinery industry in Yangquan. Huayue Huayi, a coal-mining equipment manufacturer, has used digital-controlled machining centers in its production.

On the afternoon of March 30, Zhang Shuai, an operator of one of the machining centers, finished a day's work by reporting the qualification rate of components manufactured.

"The qualification rate is 100 percent again as usual," Zhang said. "Such a performance was unimaginable when we used conventional machine tools several years ago."

The company's executives said all its 70-plus machine tools are digitally controlled and network-connected, allowing full automation for almost all the machining procedures.

Yangquan's digital industrialization has also been extended to the logistics and transportation sectors, featuring unmanned delivery and autonomous driving.

Mengxian Economic and Technological Development Zone is an important base for Yangquan's digital economy. It boasts almost all the application scenarios of the digital industry.

It is home to an intelligent urban management and operational center that is known as "the new brain of the city" among locals.

Other digital applications in the zone also include smart agriculture, smart logistics, smart tourism and e-commerce.

Backing the city's digital industrialization are a number of big data and cloud computing facilities, software developers, communication carriers and information technology providers. The industries, which are collectively known as information and communication technologies, or ICT, reported a year-on-year business revenue increase of 27.3 percent in 2022, according to local officials.

Gao Hua contributed to this story.