E-sports temptation of extrication County: Chongqing Zhongxian chasing Dream e-sports Industrial Ecosphere

"the development of e-sports 's industry needs the industrial foundation as the support. E-sports 's industrial cultivation is a long-term process, which is purely promoted by the administrative force of the government, and the implementation effect of its policy should be maintained for a long time."

across the Zhongxian Yangtze River Bridge, the taxi continued to drive for three kilometers and stopped next to a quiet industrial park. The driver kindly reminded the reporter: "there is no taxi back here."

on December 21, the reporter came to Zhongxian, Chongqing. Two days later, the final of the CMEG2017 National Mobile E-Sports Competition will be held in Zhongxian. The huge e-sports venue is on the other side of the industrial park, and although the competition will be held in two days, it still looks like a busy construction site.

Zhongxian is currently one of the few districts and counties in Chongqing without high-speed rail. If you start from Chengdu, the best choice is to take a three-hour bullet train to Shizhu County, and then take a bus for an hour to arrive at Zhongxian County.

like most third-and fourth-tier cities, the young adults of Zhongxian County go out to work, and most of the local people are middle-aged and elderly. The living condition here seems to have nothing to do with e-sports. The whole county seat is as quiet and slow as the river next to it.

Zhongxian, a city in the three Gorges Reservoir area 210 kilometers away from Chongqing, is pinning its hopes on the e-sports industry to promote the economic development of the county. In the absence of e-sports 's industrial foundation, is there any logic to follow in e-sports 's industry developed by "lifting the strength of the whole county"? can it really promote economic development?

< strong > e-sports seduces < / strong >

Zhongxian County in winter is always shrouded in white fog, and local residents are used to sitting around and burning firewood to keep warm. Linjiang Road is a scenic road in Zhongxian County, built along the Yangtze River. When the weather is clear, there are many women washing clothes by the riverside. They beat their clothes with mallets, and the white detergent foam quickly dissipates in the river.

We can still see the scene of washing clothes with river water in this era. Sun Chuanzong, 26, only thinks, "the industry in Zhongxian County is still so backward that even the water has not been polluted."

Sun Chuanzong grew up in this county, dropped out of high school, has married and had children, and now works as a ride-hailing driver. He is going to go out and look for a job after the Lunar New year. "Zhongxian County is too small to make money," he said, "but some expenses are more expensive than in Chongqing, such as 70 or 80 yuan per person for barbecue."

in 2016, Zhongxian County just reduced the incidence of poverty to less than 3%, taking off the label of city-level poor counties. In fact, the city in the reservoir area is experiencing the problem of both GDP growth and resident population decline, and there is an urgent need to find new economic growth points.

while making the work report of Zhongxian County Government in 2017, Zhongxian County Mayor Jiang Xia gave a more direct description of the problems of local economic development: first, the total industrial economy of Zhongxian County is small, and there are only 62 industrial enterprises above scale, which has a large gap with the surrounding districts and counties; second, major infrastructure construction lags behind, all surrounding districts and counties have opened railways, and Zhongxian County needs to do a lot of work to open railways; third, regional competition is fierce. In recent years, there have been seven counties in Chongqing to withdraw counties and set up districts. Among the remaining 12 counties, many counties are developing rapidly.

"the pacesetter is getting farther away, and the pursuit is getting closer," says Jiang Xia, while the task of withdrawing counties and setting up districts is equally arduous. In this context, e-sports industry is highly expected by Zhongxian County.

according to a report released by Penguin Zhiku and Tencent Esports, the size of China's e-sports industry and users are expected to reach about 40 billion yuan and 260 million respectively in 2017. "E-sports is currently in a period of explosion. Both the market size and the user scale are growing by a large margin," the report said.

"there are not many people now, but during the Spring Festival, the workers come back and the place is full of cars." Sun Chuanzong refers to the Yangtze River Bridge in Zhongxian County, which is reminiscent of the bridge built by Guo Bin in Jia Zhangke's film "the good people of the three Gorges."

in fact, the other end of the Zhongxian Yangtze River Bridge bears the hope of the county's first professional e-sports hall in the country, as well as the "e-sports town" that attracts a total investment of 5 billion yuan, all on the other side of the river. This is undoubtedly a temptation for Zhongxian, which had a GDP of only 24 billion yuan in 2016.

< strong > invest 1.4 billion yuan < / strong >

without the construction of e-sports town, Zhongxian County's popularity would not be as high as it is today. The only city in the core area of the three Gorges Reservoir area that has not been completely submerged is famous for its three Kingdoms culture, citrus and tofu.

before 2017, Baidu search for "e-sports + Zhongxian" showed almost no results. The first "electric shock" was in the work report of the Zhongxian County Government in 2017, which proposed to "actively build an e-sports complex that integrates e-sports 's cultural park, industrial incubation center, and other commercial facilities." at that time, Zhongxian had no "plan for e-sports town and holding a large-scale national competition".

the reporter noticed that in a report in August this year, Chongqing Daily restored the details of Zhongxian's building of a "e-sports town."

reported that in mid-February this year, a fellow-townsman in Zhongxian County, who worked in Datang Telecom, revealed that the Sports Information Center of the State Administration of Sports was cooperating with Datang Company when talking to a local deputy county magistrate. Select locations to build national mobile e-sports competition venues. Hearing this message, the deputy county magistrate immediately reported to the principal leaders of the county party committee.

on that night, county leaders held a meeting and found that "this is an industry with great prospects." The next day, the main leaders of the county party committee interviewed the fellow-townsman, hoping to choose the finals in Zhongxian.

according to a report by Zhongxian media Zhongzhou News Network, on February 15, the relevant responsible persons of the State Administration of Sports and the person in charge of Datang Company came to Zhongxian for an inspection. The delegation thought that "Zhongxian has a beautiful environment and charming scenery. It is suitable to develop the e-sports industry."

on March 1st, the above three parties signed an agreement in Zhongxian County, announcing that from this year, the CMEG finals of the only official mobile e-sports competition in the country will be held in Zhongxian County.

in April, Zhongxian County launched the construction of Electronic Competition Hall and e-sports Industrial Incubator, and planned to start the construction of "e-sports Town", which covers an area of 3 square kilometers, including a venue, a center, a college, a park, a base, and a scenic spot.

Zhongxian County Changjiang Xia said that "lift the strength of the whole county" to build the small town of e-sports. Driven by this slogan, with the complete hoisting of 32000 tons of steel structure on November 24th, the country's first professional electronic competition hall, covering an area of 110mu, a total construction area of 114117 square meters, a building height of 72.86m and 6096 seats in the audience hall, completed the main construction in only six months. Local media described the progress of the project as "extraordinary speed of e-sports in Zhongxian County".

on December 21, the reporter visited the industrial park where the e-sports hall is located. The workers were busy encircling. After the blue aluminum fence was erected, the messy scene of the construction site was obscured. Sprinklers keep flushing the mud back and forth, while road repairmen push the construction truck and add solid yellow lines in the middle of the road to distinguish the lanes. A group of cleaners dressed in orange overalls were gathering to do the final cleaning, while volunteers from the nearby community, greeted by the team leader, took a photo with the huge e-sports stadium behind them.

inside the e-sports Stadium, a large number of construction workers, wearing red, yellow and white helmets, are installing gates and gates for the venue. The huge quadrilateral high-definition screen in the center of the electronic stadium has been assembled-two days later, 20 teams, 118 contestants and thousands of spectators will bring the real e-sports competition to Zhongxian for the first time.

according to the plan, Zhongxian County will invest 800 million yuan to build an event park, and then invest 600 million yuan to build an incubator. "e-sports small town project is a symbol of the development and transformation of Zhongxian regional industrial economy. The investment of 1.4 billion will drive 3.6 billion of social capital in, not just 5 billion. We want to turn it into a treasure basin, "said Lai Jiao, secretary of the Zhongxian County CPC Committee.

< strong > e-sports 's industrial ecosystem < / strong >

it's not easy to turn e-sports into a treasure trove.

"Zhongxian is characterized by being more than loyal and brave, but underdeveloped," a member of the standing Committee of the Zhongxian County Party Committee told the 21st century economic reporter frankly. "We just want to find ways to develop the economy."

for this reason, Zhongxian County has laid out four major industrial platforms: industry, literature and tourism, logistics and e-sports, while only e-sports industry does not have any industrial foundation. Can a small town without any industrial foundation and location advantage rely on e-sports to complete the "counterattack"?

Jiang Xia said that the holding of the e-sports event is just the beginning, and what Zhongxian really hopes is to develop the e-sports industrial ecosystem, which includes entertainment experience, game research and development and testing, personnel training, e-sports equipment manufacturing, and so on.

at present, Zhongxian County has joined relevant departments to establish a national game software diagnosis and testing platform, and plans to cooperate with Chongqing University of posts and Telecommunications in 2018 to establish e-sports College, which enrolls undergraduate students and has a scale of 10, 000.

after having a complete idea of industrial development, Zhongxian County began to solve the "roadblocks" in e-sports 's industrial development.

with regard to the lag of infrastructure, the above member of the standing Committee of Zhongxian County Party Committee responded that a high-speed railway and a general airport would be built here, and "traffic will no longer be a problem in the future."

with regard to the lack of basic talents for the development of e-sports, the "some Policy opinions of the Office of the Zhongxian people's Government on promoting e-sports 's Industrial Development" was issued on December 18. It was announced that no less than 100 million yuan of e-sports 's industrial development funds would be allocated, focusing on supporting the introduction of e-sports industrial enterprises, the introduction of talents and the implementation of special policies.

the problems encountered in the industrial development of e-sports in Zhongxian County seem to be solved step by step. Domestically, many cities, including Taicang in Jiangsu, Yinchuan in Ningxia, Mengzhou in Henan, Wuhu in Anhui, Xi'an in Shaanxi and so on, are still in the process of exploring the industrial model.

from the development model of e-sports town, it varies from place to place, among which Taicang focuses on holding events; Mengzhou adopts the industrial development idea of "bonded + e-sports"; Wuhu joins hands with Tencent to build an industrial park with e-sports as the theme; e-sports town in Xi'an pays attention to e-sports 's talent training.

with regard to the upsurge in the construction of e-sports town in China, Wu Yannian, member of the Asia-Pacific e-sports Committee of the World Sports Federation and doctor of industrial economics of Jinan University, has some worries. He told the 21st century economic reporter, "the holding of events does not make money, and most of the proceeds belong to game manufacturers, so the upstream and downstream industrial chain extended by e-sports has a real opportunity for Nuggets."

he told reporters, "the development of e-sports 's industry needs the industrial foundation as its support, and e-sports 's industrial cultivation is a long-term process. Relying solely on the administrative strength of the government, the implementation effect of its policy should be maintained in a long-term nature."

"We are also constantly exploring and crossing the river by feeling the stones," the above-mentioned member of the standing Committee of the Zhongxian County CPC Committee told reporters.

Edit: yvonne