A time-lapse picture presents a dynamic view of Hohhot's traffic. [Photo/IC]

Hohhot city – the capital of North China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region – got top marks for its economic and social achievements in 2021, according to the city's statistics bureau.

In 2021, the gross domestic product or GDP of the city hit 312.14 billion yuan ($49 billion), a year-on-year increase of 6.5 percent, ranking it third in the region.

Starting in 2021, Hohhot has launched a three-year action plan for its six major industries – the dairy, biomedicine, solar power, digital economy, modern logistics and cultural tourism sectors.

The dairy industry is widely said to be one of the city's most competitive areas of endeavor. Hohhot is reportedly aiming in the period to promote the downstream expansion of the industrial supply chain. It will, moreover, aim to boost the value chain to the mid-to-high end, as well as promote the development of two dairy industry projects: Yili Modern Smart Health Valley and Mengniu Dairy Industrial Park.

The city is expected to develop a dairy industry cluster with an annual output of more than 100 billion yuan.

In recent years, the Horinger New Area has used its competitive advantages as an industrial hub to support the construction of a new generation of information infrastructure, while accelerating the introduction of various big data and cloud computing infrastructure projects.

Three major telcos – China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom – have established the largest cloud computing data center bases in Horinger. These have attracted enterprises such as Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, Inspur and Sinopec, as well as the data storage business of national ministries.

A development plan has been formulated for Hohhot city during the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-25), in which GDP is expected to top 400 billion yuan.

The city is also set to grow into a premier regional science and technology innovation center. It will push to implement major scientific and technological breakthroughs and develop a multi-level personnel recruitment and training system.