With the full strength of the whole city, this trillion-yuan city aims to "take it a step further".

According to Dongguan Daily, on March 17, the signing ceremony of the strategic cooperation between Dongguan and Huawei and the launch ceremony of the "HarmonyOS City" were held under the theme of "Innovative Dongguan, Future of HarmonyOS". Wei Hao, the Secretary of the Dongguan Municipal Party Committee, and other city leaders including Zeng Jianpeng, Chen Qingsong, and Luo Bin, as well as Xia Guohuan, the President of the One-stop Service Corps of Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd., and Wang Hongyou, the General Manager of Huawei's Government and Enterprise Business in Guangdong, attended the event.

At the event, the signing ceremony of the comprehensive deepening strategic cooperation agreement between the Dongguan Municipal People's Government and Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. was held, marking the official launch of the "HarmonyOS City". It is reported that this cooperation agreement is themed on "digitalization and intelligence", aiming to jointly build a future "HarmonyOS City" featuring interconnection of all things, data-driven, co-intelligence empowerment, and coexistence of industry and city based on the open - source HarmonyOS.

Dongguan will spare no effort to promote the construction of the "HarmonyOS City". It will timely release and dynamically update the "list of scenario requirements", establish a "green channel" and a "time - limited handling" system for scenario opening, and implement the "open competition for benchmark scenarios" to enable HarmonyOS applications to quickly move from the "laboratory" to the "production line" and into the "life circle".

In 2025, Dongguan's GDP reached 1,276.02 billion yuan, a year - on - year increase of 4.0%. For this city with a trillion - level GDP, as the economic aggregate expands, every percentage point of growth is hard - won, which inevitably puts forward higher requirements for the economic structure and quality. During the 15th Five - Year Plan period, if Dongguan wants to take a further step in its economic aggregate, it needs to tap deeper economic development potential.

At the "First Meeting of the New Year", Dongguan admitted that there are still many problems and challenges in the current economic and social development. These include the need to further give play to the leading role of state - owned assets and state - owned enterprises, the need to strengthen support for the development of the private economy, the lack of scale effects in strategic emerging industries and future industries, the insufficient support of the service industry, the existence of many safety risks and hidden dangers in various fields, and the need to improve the city's comprehensive carrying capacity.

How to break through? At the Guangdong Provincial High - quality Development Conference this year, Liang Hua, the Chairman of Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd., mentioned in his speech that in the era of all - things intelligence, the interconnection and inter - operability among various devices are the core capabilities to provide users with intelligent experiences. Breaking through the underlying capabilities of the operating system and building intermediate standards and middleware that benefit the entire industry can promote the industry to form a new situation of high - quality innovation and bring more technological innovation opportunities.

Currently, the distributed operating system capabilities, multi - terminal collaborative architecture carried by the HarmonyOS ecosystem, as well as the resulting developer community and application ecosystem, are becoming the "strategic entry point" for local governments to achieve the next round of digital economic growth. Nationwide, many city governments are leveraging their respective resources to join the competition for the HarmonyOS ecosystem.

Dongguan has a first - mover advantage. Its relationship with Huawei can be traced back to 2005 when Songshan Lake in Dongguan signed a project investment agreement with Huawei and established Huawei's southern factory. In 2012, Huawei's terminal headquarters was established there. Not limited to manufacturing, in 2017, Dongguan signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Huawei for the first time and carried out cooperation in areas such as smart cities. In 2019, Dongguan selected Huawei to carry out the reform and construction of the "digital government", which serves various industries in Dongguan extensively...

According to the work arrangement of Dongguan's "Document No. 1" this year, relevant officials from the local industry and information technology department said that they will support the "AI + platform ecosystem" and build an open, collaborative and enabling system. Focusing on the integrated application of HarmonyOS in urban management, government services, education, transportation and other fields, they will vigorously build an open - source HarmonyOS ecological city, actively develop and promote scenario applications such as "HarmonyOS + Smart City" and "HarmonyOS + Intelligent Life" to make the open - source HarmonyOS system take root in more fields.

According to public reports, in order to promote the construction of the "HarmonyOS City" with all - out efforts, Dongguan will focus on three key points. Firstly, it will link the entire industrial chain for empowerment, build high - standard "physical carriers" for industrial agglomeration, strongly promote the opening of the ecosystem by "chain - leading" enterprises, accelerate the construction of a "public capability platform", and build a rain - forest - like HarmonyOS ecosystem to empower the construction of the "8 + 8+4" modern industrial system.

Secondly, it will carry out full - coverage AI literacy training and build a full - chain talent support system for "attracting, cultivating, using and retaining" talents to ensure the precise matching of talent output with enterprise needs. Thirdly, it will strengthen all - around supporting policy support, strengthen top - level design, implement the main responsibility, establish a municipal special working group, and launch a number of key projects that are "visible and tangible".

This article is from the WeChat official account "Urban Evolution Theory", author: Yang Huan. Republished by 36Kr with authorization.