By combining with hardware manufacturing, services and the creative industry, the fast-growing software sector in Beijing's Zhongguancun is creating a great deal of "green GDP", said local government officials.

Last year the city's software and IT services sector contributed an incremental value of 175 billion yuan ($28 billion) to the economy, an average annual growth rate of 20 percent since 2000.

In the first three months of this year, the sector grew 12.9 percent year-on-year, the fastest among all the service sectors in the city.

Zhongguancun Software Park, established in 2001, is now home to more than 5,700 companies in the sector that had a combined income of 405 billion yuan last year, 82.6 percent of the city's total and an increase of 10 percent from 2012

They also created nearly $2 billion in export value last year, up 14.2 percent.

Among them are headquarters and global R&D centers for nearly 280 industry leaders that generated an output value of 121.3 billion yuan.

Yet the sector consumes only 0.0087 tons of standard coal for every 10,000 yuan in GDP, just 1 percent of the national average, according to a recent report by the local government.

There are now three trends for the software and IT industry in the city, said Tong Haiwei, an official of the Beijing Commission of Economy and Information Technology responsible for the sector.

"The industry is shifting its focus from simply manufacturing toward services," he said. "The Internet-based thinking is transforming and restructuring traditional industries.

"Hardware is becoming increasingly smart. More smart equipment and terminals may lead to new demands in the future.

"An information platform that integrates smart terminals, software, content and operating services will break the advantages of traditional monopolists and encourage diverse development of different companies."

The government report also noted that local software companies are paying greater attention to the development of proprietary technologies. Last year they invested 11.5 billion yuan in R&D.

At the same time, they registered 42,000 software copyrights, 25.4 percent of the total nationwide. The number was less than 4,000 in 2000.

More than 100 multinational giants have been attracted to set up software and telecommunications R&D centers in the city.

"We are narrowing the gap with Silicon Valley in a number of cutting-edge fields such as cloud computing, mobile Internet and 4G telecommunications," said Tong.

The software industry is projected to generate an income of 1 trillion yuan by 2020.

To achieve that goal, the local authority plans to improve services for small companies by launching a series of funds and optimizing approval procedures.

It will encourage the companies in some emerging fields including education, health management, traffic controls and government services.

It has also planned a new software industry base that will cover about 30 square kilometers.

zhangzhao@chinadaily.com.cn

High-tech health products are part of the Zhongguancun exhibition zone at the Beijing Fair.

The negotiation zone.

The energy conservation service zone.