Japanese equipment vendor NEC this week signed a memorandum of understanding with Chongqing City, one of China’s four national central cities, with a view to forming a strategic partnership in the smart city and cloud service areas.

Chongqing is a major city in Southwest China with a population of 28.8 million and aims to shift its status from an industrial-oriented economy to a communications industry hub.

Under the partnership, NEC and Chongqing “will create an ecosystem of human resources for the development of IT, cutting-edge technologies, products and services for local, national and global markets,” providing cloud services that support social infrastructure and smart city projects, as well as contributing to the city’s industrial development with information and communication technologies.

NEC also said it regards Chongqing as a strategic base for its business in China and will establish a local subsidiary focused on cloud business as well as build a data centre supporting cloud service platforms.

As well as developing the human resources requirements for the cloud industry and technical certification, NEC will establish a laboratory for the development of cloud service applications for government, traffic, disaster prevention, energy, medical system and agricultural uses, in addition to the development of cloud computing technologies.