China News Service, Beijing, November 12. In Chaoyang District, Beijing, a new economic landmark is rising. Here, tens of billions of calculations per second are gathered here, and data transactions worth hundreds of billions are surging. This is the world's first Data Business District (DBD) under construction in Chaoyang District, Beijing. Iteratively upgrading from the traditional central business district (CBD) to a data business district, Chaoyang District in Beijing is promoting the reshaping of the business ecosystem with data as a key production factor.
Chaoyang District is the core area of Beijing's digital economy and has a solid industrial foundation. In April 2024, the Chaoyang District Data Bureau was unveiled. It is the first independently established data bureau in Beijing. Beijing International Big Data Exchange, Beijing Digital Economy Computing Center, and Beijing Data Group have all landed in Chaoyang. At the same time, Chaoyang District gathers almost all foreign embassies in Beijing, 70% of the regional headquarters of multinational companies, 65% of foreign financial institutions, and the World Data Organization (WDO). It is rich in international resources and has laid solid foundation for exploring cross-border data flows. At the same time, massive data in finance, business, culture, consumption and other fields are also intersecting in Chaoyang District, providing a variety of real-world scenarios and cutting-edge demonstration soil for data innovation applications.
How should DBD be constructed?
In 2025, Chaoyang District officially launched the construction of the world's first DBD, solving problems from the system, accelerating the gathering of data resources, and cultivating the market ecology.
In terms of institutional innovation, Chaoyang District released the city's first district-level all-area digital transformation plan and a three-year action plan for the Data Business District (DBD); established the city's first data industry party committee to coordinate party building work in the data industry, and promote party building and the development of the data industry to resonate at the same frequency; support the Beijing International Big Data Exchange to upgrade its capabilities and establish a complete data circulation and transaction rule system; rely on the data export negative list management system to explore the establishment of risk-level management, data export whitelist and other mechanisms.
In terms of data resource aggregation, Chaoyang District has accelerated the aggregation of data resources to the platform, giving full play to its local advantages and relying on Beijing Data Group to explore the operation of public data areas such as finance, medical care, and education; it has hosted the "Data Elements Social entities initiated the establishment of the "Ecological Community to Support Chaoyang District's Global Digital Transformation" and the "Ecological Alliance for Medical and Health Data Elements"; enterprises were encouraged to screen key business data in key industries to form structured, trustworthy industry high-quality data sets, and to provide "raw materials" for high-value data applications with high-quality data resources.
In terms of cultivating market ecology, Chaoyang District has carried out a comprehensive sorting out of data companies. As of now, the district has gathered 5,700 data-related companies, including more than 2,000 companies above designated standards. Among them, 988 will be added in the first half of 2026, and the number of data industry employees will reach 306,000. It promotes the aggregation role of the data element industrial park platform and supports small and medium-sized enterprises to innovate in subdivided fields such as data services, algorithm research and development, and privacy computing.
After more than a year of exploration and practice, Chaoyang District was successfully approved as a national data industry cluster. Beijing Digital Institute has put on the shelves more than 3,500 data products, and on-site transactions cover dozens of industry scenarios such as artificial intelligence, finance, transportation, and medical care; the Beijing Digital Economy Computing Power Center was completed and deployed more than 1,000P hybrid computing power; Local national-level material trusted data space, the country's first automotive trusted data space and bulk commodity trusted data space; relying on multi-source data to build an urban management AI support platform, which can identify 10 major categories of high-frequency urban management problems in real time, such as illegal tourist merchants and overflowing trash cans, and realize the transformation from "passive response" to "active discovery". At present, 136 units in the region have established a three-level working mechanism of "chief data officer-data specialist-data liaison", forming 52 typical smart scenarios covering various fields. A digital economic ecosystem with data as its core driving force is accelerating in Chaoyang, injecting new momentum into high-quality urban development.
Standing at the new starting point of the "15th Five-Year Plan", Chaoyang District of Beijing will take the opportunity of building the world's first data business district to comprehensively promote the construction of "Chaoyang AI Global Digital City". From CBD to DBD, from physical space to digital territory, a digital and intelligent city that is more suitable for living, working, business, learning and traveling is slowly unfolding before people's eyes.
