Guizhou province convened a conference in Seoul, South Korea recently as part of its efforts to promote its big data industry and attract outside investment to its capital, Guiyang, and managed to pull in more than 70 delegates from Korean companies to hear what it had to say.

Li Zuoxun, the deputy mayor of Guiyang, explained his city's advantages in big data and their favorable policies for big data investors, then added, "Korea and Guizhou have already done well in exchanges and cooperation and we welcome more Korean companies and organization to come and learn more about Guiyang and its investment environment."

In supporting Li's effort, Wang Congrong, a commercial counselor at the Chinese Embassy in South Korea, remarked, "We counselors will continue to promote economic and trade cooperation between Guizhou and Korea and hopefully there will be more promotion activities like this in the near future."

The Internet has provided both Guizhou and Guiyang with the means to develop big data,experts said. And there is Guiyang's cool climate, sufficient power supply and transportation networks that give it an advantages in attracting data centers and cloud computing projects.

Some estimates put the scale of big data's worth at 54 billion yuan ($8.9 billion) by the end of 2016, and accounting for 30 percent of the total value of the city's information industry.