As tokens emerge as a key resource in the era of artificial intelligence, Guizhou province in southwestern China is stepping up efforts to leverage emerging businesses by leveraging its strengths in computing power, data resources and application scenarios.
Emerging as a new driving force for quality growth, tokens and related industry applications are key to large-scale cluster-based development, according to a conference held in Guiyang on Monday.
In the field of AI, a token refers to the smallest unit of data processed by an AI model.
The growing importance of the token is reflected in official data. According to the National Data Bureau, China’s average daily token calls exceeded 140 trillion in March, a jump of more than 1,000 times from 100 billion at the beginning of 2024, and an increase of more than 40% from 100 trillion at the end of 2025.
“Guiyang City and Guian New Area have laid a solid foundation of computing power and data resources, creating favorable conditions for the development of the token economy,” said Futao, vice mayor of Guiyang City.
The region currently has 27 large-scale data centers with a total computing power of more than 165 exaflops (exaflops of floating point operations per second), with intelligent computing accounting for more than 98%, Hu said.
Tang Hanlin, chairman of China Datapay, a Guizhou-based data asset management and digital intelligence service provider, said Guiyang and Guian New Area have unique strengths in four key areas: power supply, computing power, AI models and data, making them fertile ground for developing the token economy.
The company’s token service platform averages more than 12 billion daily token calls, with both users and orders in the hundreds of thousands, Tang said.
He said the growing demand for tokens is creating new requirements for specialization of token services, as general-purpose token services can lead to semantic ambiguities and output deviations due to lack of domain-specific knowledge.
“We use high-quality industry datasets for training and fine-tuning to transform generic tokens into industry-specific tokens, providing strong support for developing vertical AI applications,” said Tang.
Citing the development of the sector, Wang Shudong, president of industrial development at Huawei Cloud, said that tokens have not yet been widely used in vertical scenarios such as manufacturing, government services, and public services, and their role in supporting the real economy still has significant room for growth.
“We will focus on distinctive areas and cooperate with leading enterprises to help promote the intelligent upgrading of industrial clusters in Guiyang, Guian New Area and across Guizhou,” Wang said.
Global demand for AI services is also creating new growth opportunities for the region.
China Data Pay, for example, said it is exploring overseas opportunities for its token services by leveraging local infrastructure, such as dedicated international internet data channels, while studying compliance and payment requirements in various markets.
Bai Wenxi, vice chairman of the China Enterprise Capital Alliance, said Guizhou should turn its strengths into new industrial momentum and strengthen its role in emerging fields.
Luo Siyang Guiyang contributed to this story.
zhangchenxu@chinadaily.com.cn
