A smart robot is displayed at a robot training facility in the Chengdu Hi-Tech Industrial Development Zone in Sichuan province. [Photo/China Daily]

Once a 2.5-square-kilometer stretch of farmland on the city's southern outskirts, the Chengdu Hi-Tech Industrial Development Zone in Sichuan province has, over nearly four decades, transformed itself into a hub for emerging and future industries driven by technological innovation, advanced manufacturing and the digital economy.

Founded in 1988, Chengdu Hi-Tech Industrial Development Zone is among China's first batch of State-level high-tech zones and the first national independent innovation demonstration zone in western China.

During the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25) period, the zone sustained solid economic growth, with annual GDP increasing by an average of about 22 billion yuan ($3.19 billion). Data released at the zone's recent work conference show that its GDP rose to 366.15 billion yuan last year, marking a year-on-year increase of 6.1 percent.

That expansion has gone hand in hand with faster industrial upgrading and the rise of new growth drivers.

In 2025, value-added industrial output of the electronic information sector above a designated size rose 10 percent, while the total scale of strategic emerging industries reached 247.83 billion yuan and that of future industries stood at 8.13 billion yuan, according to data released at the recent work conference.

Such industrial momentum is already translating into major project breakthroughs. In the electronic information sector, Chinese semiconductor display manufacturer BOE Technology Group recently saw the first product from its 8.6th generation AMOLED production line project light up in the western area of the Chengdu Hi-Tech Industrial Development Zone.

As the first of its kind in China, the new production line will significantly reduce OLED screen power consumption, extend the lifespan of products and improve the cutting efficiency of mid-sized OLED panels, better meeting demand for lightweight and portable electronic devices, the company said.

Feng Qiang, CEO of BOE, said the 8.6th generation AMOLED production line marks a major move in the company's efforts to deepen its footprint in the city, and will make greater contributions to the development of Chengdu's industrial ecosystem and high-quality economic growth.

Meanwhile, emerging and future industries in the Chengdu Hi-Tech Industrial Development Zone are gaining momentum, as artificial intelligence applications continue to broaden.

For instance, at the Zhuge AI Center, an industrial park focused on AI in the Chengdu Hi-Tech Industrial Development Zone, the Sendbot Space system — an embodied-intelligence sorting-and-delivery system developed by Chengdu Yuefan Innovation Technology — has been commercially deployed at the site.

As the world's first commercial system integrating embodied intelligent sorting with delivery, it is opening up new application space for unmanned logistics in office buildings, the company said.

Employees can place orders directly from their desks. A sorting robot retrieves goods from shelves and loads them into a delivery robot, which can autonomously take the elevator and complete cross-floor delivery.

Under the system, robots are no longer used simply as passive carriers for transport tasks, but have evolved into embodied intelligent agents with human-like perception that link the entire chain from sorting and dispatching to delivery, the company said.

These technological advances align with China's plan to intensify efforts to further develop and expand the "AI Plus" initiative, speed up the application of next-generation intelligent terminals and AI agents, and promote the large-scale commercial use of AI in key sectors and fields, so as to foster new forms and models of AI-native businesses, according to this year's Government Work Report.

Bai Wenxi, vice-chairman of the China Enterprise Capital Union, said the progress made by the Chengdu Hi-Tech Industrial Development Zone in recent years provides a compelling example of innovation-driven, high-quality development in central and western China.

"By strengthening its technology-driven industrial base, the zone has helped give Chengdu a more robust growth model powered by both manufacturing and innovation," Bai said.