Officials report on Inner Mongolia's achievements in industry and information technology over the past 70 years at a press conference in Hohhot, capital of North China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region, on Sept 3. [Photo/nm.people.cn]

Since the founding of the People's Republic of China 70 years ago, the total industrial economy of Inner Mongolia has increased exponentially -- from less than 100 million yuan ($14.02 million) in 1949 to 548.5 billion yuan by 2018.

That amounts to average annual growth of 21.1 percent calculated at constant prices, senior officials told a press conference held in Hohhot, the capital of North China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region, on Sept 3.

The press conference was part of a series of events being held in Inner Mongolia to report on the region's achievements over the past seven decades and to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China.

The contribution of Inner Mongolia's industrial production to the region's total GDP has generally increased steadily, from 8.1 percent in the early days of the founding of PRC to 31.7 percent last year.

In 2018, taxes paid by industry in the region accounted for 58.2 percent of total tax revenue. From January to July this year, the added value of industrial enterprises above a designated size – companies reporting 20 million yuan or more annually in revenue --  increased by 8 percent. This was 2.2 percentage points higher than the national average growth rate.

With the development of industrialization process, the region's information industry has also begun to develop, officials said.

In recent years, the region has continuously strengthened the construction of its information infrastructure and vigorously developed the industrial Internet.

It has accelerated the deep integration of industrialization and informationization, actively established and developed pilot demonstrations of intelligent manufacturing and made great efforts to cultivate and develop the electronics information sector.

Officials said that by the end of last year, the internet penetration rate in the whole region had reached 99 percent. Hohhot has built the largest data center base in the Asia-Pacific region with a capacity of 1.11 million servers, ranking it first in the country.

At the same time, at the end of 2018 some 7,735 industrial companies in the region were connected to the cloud platform.

Last year the main business income of the electronics manufacturing industry in the region totaled 23.99 billion yuan, for a year-on-year increase of 30 percent. The software services industry revenue was 1.17 billion yuan.