Hangzhou in East China's Zhejiang province on May 12 awarded nine characteristic towns with honorary titles specifying their achievements in a more detailed way, such as most beautiful, most dynamic, and most industrial strength.

The characteristic town project, which was initiated by the Hangzhou government in 2014, has witnessed the establishment of 36 such towns over the years, with a combined area spanning only one percent of the city's total area but having been home to 15 percent of Hangzhou's high-tech companies and over 40 percent of the city's high-caliber talent.

Hangzhou has also decided that by 2023, it will set up two characteristic towns that have industrial scales of over 100 billion yuan ($15.5 billion), three towns with over 50 billion yuan in industrial scale, and more than 20 towns ranked as provincial level.

Here are more details about the nine characteristic towns.

The Binjiang Internet of Things Town. [Photo/zjol.com.cn]

Three characteristic towns honored with most industrial strength

Cloud Town has developed from a township-level industrial park to a domestic leader in cloud computing. It is now home to an elite group of Chinese cloud computing and artificial intelligence professionals and has organized a number of industry-changing events, such as the Aspara Conference and the 2050 Conference.

The Binjiang Internet of Things Town is the only of its kind in Zhejiang province that boasts an industrial scale of over 100 billion yuan. As home to the headquarters of 12 listed companies, the town marks the origin of Zhejiang's IoT industry and has also become a provincial leader in digital and intelligent development.

The over 1,400 biopharmaceutical enterprises in Hangzhou Biopharma Town earned 40 billion yuan in operational revenue in 2020, maintaining the town's leading role in the local biopharmaceuticals industry.