(Yicai) Jan. 6 -- The government of Zhuhai in China's southern Guangdong province has established the country's first local development bureau focused on artificial intelligence.

The new agency, set up at the end of last year, aims to make Zhuhai the most suitable city in China for the development of the AI industry, the city announced on Dec. 29. It will accelerate the growth of the local AI sector in a more systematic and focused manner, it added.

Wenzhou in Zhejiang province also established an AI development bureau in September. However, it is not an independent government agency solely dedicated to AI development, but it also undertakes data management functions.

Around the same time as Zhuhai, the government of Haizhu district in Guangzhou opened an AI development bureau, becoming China's first district-level government department set up to exclusively focus on AI development.

The establishment of AI development bureaus in Zhuhai and Haizhu is an "extraordinary" support measure from local governments for the AI industry, Ma Yanxin, director of South China Normal University School of Law's Rule of Law Research Center for Digital Government and Digital Economy, told Yicai. The initiative will likely accelerate the development of the relevant local sectors, he pointed out.

The value of setting up an AI development bureau lies in its ability to coordinate more resources for companies across energy, computing power, data, industrial policies, and talent, Ma said.

The AI industry is a high-energy-consuming one, and insufficient energy quotas have restricted the ability of many regions to build data centers in recent years, Ma noted. However, using green power can alleviate this limitation, and whether it is sourced locally or imported from other regions, coordination is needed to address the issue, so a dedicated government department can oversee the process, he added.

In addition, the implementation of industrial regulatory and development policies, the allocation of land, talent, energy, and other resources, and how to assist the AI industry in achieving breakthroughs in core technologies, will be key areas of focus for the new bureaus, Ma said.

The functions of the AI development bureaus do not involve regulatory issues, with their focus not on promoting AI applications across various industries, Ma stressed.

The key is to clarify the responsibilities and positioning of dedicated institutions for AI, avoiding overlaps in responsibilities with other government agencies, Pan Helin, a member of the Expert Committee for Information and Communication Economy under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said to Yicai. Having more government departments is not necessarily better, and establishing dedicated management institutions in every region does not guarantee positive outcomes, he pointed out.

Due to the varying stages of AI industry development in different regions, most cities do not need to establish dedicated management institutions, according to Ma.

The intelligent computing power scale in Zhuhai has reached 2,100P, Yao Wei, director of the Zhuhai Municipal Bureau of Industry and Information Technology, revealed last month. In addition, the city has launched China's first brain-like computing power open platform and has gathered 50 large language model developers, forming a tiered layout that spans from general LLMs to industry-specific vertical models, Yao added.

Haizhu homed over 7,000 companies in the broader AI sector as of the end of last year, covering the entire AI supply chain, according to data on the website of the local government. There are 32 LLM registration projects, with the district planning to allocate CNY310 million (USD44.4 million) each year to accelerate the nurturing of relevant unicorns.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Martin Kadiev