North China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region has made significant progress in digitally transforming its manufacturing sector during the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-25), according to the region's department of industry and information technology.

Over the past five years, the region has allocated 780 million yuan ($109.86 million) in special funds, leveraging nearly 4 billion yuan in social investment to support the transition.

Infrastructure development has seen major breakthroughs: Inner Mongolia has built 95,000 5G base stations, achieving full coverage across industrial parks and major industrial and mining enterprises.

The region's data-center computing capacity has exceeded 218,000 petaflops, while network latency has been reduced to under 20 milliseconds. A total of 41 industrial internet platforms now serve key sectors including metallurgy, chemicals, and equipment manufacturing.

Digital transformation is yielding strong results. More than 20,000 enterprises have migrated to the cloud and the region has established 50 advanced smart factories, with eight recognized for excellence. Pilot projects across eight key industrial chains have enabled end-to-end digital upgrades in research, design, and production.

The software sector is also experiencing rapid growth. By 2024, Inner Mongolia had 71 software enterprises above designated size with combined revenue reaching 3.5 billion yuan – seven times the amount in 2020. Emerging fields such as cloud computing and big data now account for more than half the sector, highlighting growing industrial clustering.

To safeguard industrial security, the region has developed a four-tier coordination mechanism covering more than 3,800 major industrial enterprises. Over the past five years, authorities have handled over 1,000 early-warning incidents, maintaining "zero accidents" in industrial control systems during major events.