The cloud division of Chinese Internet giant Tencent has opened a high performance computing data center in Chongqing, southwest China.

The project joins an existing $1 billion data center, which opened in 2015.

Smart cities and smart factories

The new facility aims to target the manufacturing sector - with Chongqing a major manufacturing center, and the economic center of the upstream Yangtze basin.

China is in the midst of ‘Made in China 2025,’ a master plan to overhaul its factories and production processes for the modern era, building smart factories that will produce huge quantities of data.

The previous data center aimed to support the public sector, as well as local businesses. In 2015, Tencent also announced that it had signed a partnership deal with the Chongqing municipal government for a smart city project.

The plan is to allow people to use the city’s administrative services through Tencent’s WeChat - users can apply for passports, marriage registrations, birth registrations and more in the multi-purpose social media mobile app.

Chongqing is also home to a China Mobile data center, and an upcoming Baidu facility. The city is one of China’s four direct-controlled municipalities, along with Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin.