National Data Group established in Xiong'an; 10 Yangtze River Delta cities form data annotation alliance

On October 20, two data-related events took place. In the north, China National Data Group Co., Ltd. was established in Xiong'an New Area, Hebei. This central state-owned enterprise, whose primary responsibilities and main business are the development and utilization of data resources, is seen by outsiders as helping to accelerate the building of a nationally integrated data market. In the south, at the 2026 Physical AI and World Model Conference, 10 cities in the Yangtze River Delta joined hands, and the National Data Annotation Pilot Jiangsu-Anhui City Alliance was established in Nanjing, Jiangsu. China National Data Group will shoulder the important task of developing, integrating and operating national-level data resources and promote the cross-industry and cross-regional flow and sharing of data resources; while the alliance of 10 Yangtze River Delta cities has brought the granularity of coordination down to the "data annotation" link. Data annotation is the foundation of the artificial intelligence industry. Simply put, it is the basic process that enables artificial intelligence to "understand" real-world scenarios. Without high-quality, standardized annotated data, even the largest models will find it difficult to be deployed. This time, 10 Yangtze River Delta cities including Nanjing, Jiangsu and Wuhu, Anhui jointly established a data annotation joint innovation center, which will effectively address the industry's long-standing pain points such as scattered industrial resources, differing standards and insufficient regional coordination. Cao Haibin, Director of the Digital Infrastructure and Digital Technology Division of the Nanjing Municipal Data Bureau, said that the 10 cities will coordinate in five areas including the construction of industrial public service platforms and mutual recognition of data standards, pooling scattered scenarios, data, computing power and talent from various places into a single force, and providing a replicable and promotable Jiangsu-Anhui solution for data annotation in fields such as industrial manufacturing across the country. The premise of "pooling into a single force" is that all localities are willing to concede some of the convenience of "acting on their own" when it comes to standards. Among the key tasks to be advanced after the alliance's establishment, the formulation of data annotation specifications and quality evaluation standards and the realization of mutual recognition and sharing among the ten cities have been explicitly written in. The willingness of the 10 cities to align their standards is equivalent to clearing away a layer of institutional "roadblocks" for the circulation of data elements on a larger scale. In October 2025, the second joint meeting of the Yangtze River Delta Data Special Cooperation Group was held in Nanjing. The three provinces and one municipality released a number of regional local standards for the Yangtze River Delta, including the Guidelines for Classified and Graded Public Data, the Data Access Specifications for the Yangtze River Delta Data Sharing Platform, and the Guidelines for Compiling Data Resource Catalogs. In the same month, at a special press conference of the National Data Administration, Shanghai proposed that it would rely on the Yangtze River Delta data cooperation mechanism to deepen data sharing, innovation coordination and scenario opening, promote cross-regional coordinated development and complementary advantages, and jointly build a Yangtze River Delta digital industrial cluster with a trillion-yuan scale; Jiangsu stated that it would explore practical paths for the market-based and value-based use of data elements through four-dimensional coordination of "institutional innovation + industrial cultivation + infrastructure + scenario empowerment," empowering the upgrading of traditional industries and the cultivation of emerging industries; Zhejiang proposed that it would adhere to the two-way empowerment of comprehensive data element pilot trials and innovative development of the digital economy, deepen the construction of innovation systems for enterprises, talent, markets and platforms, and promote the deep integration of technological innovation and industrial innovation. From cooperation mechanisms at the provincial level to the "mutual recognition of standards" among 10 cities at the annotation link, it can be seen that data coordination in the Yangtze River Delta is moving from framework agreements to specific industrial processes.