Tianhe CBD digital service exports show 20% annual compound growth for five years

Digital services in the Tianhe central business district of Guangzhou, Guangdong province, has maintained its momentum for international expansion, with an annual compound growth rate of exports exceeding 20 percent in the past five years, according to a research report released on Tuesday.

The digital service export base in Tianhe was selected as one of the first 12 national bases of its kind in China in April 2020. It is the only base in a central business district.

The GDP of the Tianhe base has grown from 306.6 billion yuan ($45.61 billion) in 2020 to 385.4 billion yuan in 2025, and it has attracted over 25,000 digital service enterprises, according to the report.

Over the past five years, a four-tiered structure of enterprises has been formed in the base, consisting of multinational headquarters, local leading companies, platform service providers, and industrial software companies.

Unlike most digital service export hubs in China, which usually rely on software parks and high-tech zones, the Tianhe base has forged a distinctive development path, according to Wang Jian, a member of the research team that produced the report and director of the International Business Research Center at the University of International Business and Economics.

"The base leverages the city's core existing buildings, headquarters resources, and professional service clusters to achieve efficient linkage across the industrial chain, creating the nation's only CBD-type digital service export ecosystem," said Wang.

The report was released during a meeting held at the Google Cross-border E-commerce Acceleration Center in Guangzhou on Tuesday.