On the morning of the 10th, BYD Racing Park in Zhengzhou, inland China. I headed into 1.5 meters of water in the U8, an electric sport utility vehicle (SUV) model of "Yangwang," BYD's premium brand in the "hundreds of millions." When the water rose to the height of the wheels, it felt like the wheels were "plowing through" the water with force, but as the water soon submerged the hood, it felt like being on a boat rather than in a car.
As the water level deepened, the windows and sunroof opened automatically with a voice prompt, and the wheels moving left and right in the water looked like rowing oars. The underwater propulsion system, which had been idle, also started operating. Not a single drop of water seeped into the cabin. A site official said, "This technology was developed to prepare for crisis situations such as submersion. It can stay in the water for about two hours," and explained, "Smartphone waterproofing technology is applied to the body, allowing it to float naturally."
Next to the large water tank stood a steep sand dune like those seen at ski resorts. The U8, which had been driving in the water, kicked up sand as it went up and down the dune. This dune has a vertical height of 29.6 meters and a slope of 28 degrees, holding a Guinness World Record. A company official said, "Along with the strong power to go straight up and down steep sand dunes, the precise technology that allows U-turns even at sharp angles is also a key strength of the U8." According to the official, the Yangwang U8 is being sold for 1.08 million yuan (about 230 million won) for China's domestic market. For overseas sales, it plans to first throw down the gauntlet in the Middle East market.
◇ A dedicated export garage even built out… the heart of the Zhengzhou special zone, BYD
The new energy vehicle industrial complex in the Zhengzhou Airport Economy Zone is accelerating its development. Rapidly expanding with a target size of 100 square kilometers, this complex centers on BYD. The BYD Zhengzhou plant broke ground in 37 days and began mass production 17 months later, producing one finished vehicle every 50 seconds and one battery cell every three seconds. This plant is the largest among BYD factories in size and capacity. Since full operation began in 2023, cumulative production has surpassed 1 million units, accounting for more than 80% of new energy vehicle production in Henan province.
Behind that is a high level of automation. Entering the assembly plant, a massive vertical structure stood out. Large claws, like those on claw machines, were attached to ceiling rails made of tall, vertically erected steel frames, and pulleys moved up and down to carry bodies up and down. When a body finished a process and came off the conveyor belt, it was lifted to the second floor, where a ceiling-mounted claw picked it up, placed it on the rail, and moved it to the next process.
Human intervention was visible at the very end of the assembly process, during hood and tire assembly and visual inspection. Bodies that completed inspection after riding the slow, massive conveyor belt underwent driving checks by crossing dozens of sequential bumps and were then neatly parked inside the plant.
The special zone also set up a separate logistics base for exporting BYD vehicles. On the afternoon of the same day, at the western operational area of the Zhengzhou International Land Port, Toyota vehicles for domestic sales were being unloaded from freight trains and warehoused, while on the opposite side of the tracks, a BYD-only zone stretched endlessly. Inside the fenced area, BYD vehicles awaiting export were parked in rows. All were manufactured at the Zhengzhou plant here. From here, they are exported to Europe and other regions by freight train.
◇ China's largest computing center and domestic CPUs… accelerating IT ecosystem self-reliance
The Zhengzhou Airport Economy Zone is building not only electric vehicles but also an information technology (IT) industry cluster worth trillions of yuan. It spans from smartphone manufacturing to semiconductors, servers, and computing centers, forming an independent technology ecosystem based on Chinese-made central processing units (CPUs) and artificial intelligence (AI) computing power.
Visited on the morning of the 9th, the Henan Airport Computing Center (hereafter center) is the largest artificial intelligence (AI) computing center in central China, with more than 30 billion yuan (about 6 trillion won) invested. Total computing power reaches 10,000 petaflops (P), the largest in China. It develops its own large models and also operates models from partner companies. The center is equipped with 100,000 Nvidia graphics processing units (GPUs), including H100, B100 and B200. Given that xAI, led by Elon Musk and a leader in the global AI market, has about 200,000 GPUs, this is a considerable amount.
Based on this massive computing power, the center is developing AI for governments and public institutions. It has developed AI agents for audits, firefighting, and civil complaints, and the audit bureau and fire brigade of the Zhengzhou Airport Economy Zone are actually using them. Among them, the "AI Board of Audit and Inspection" is based on 300,000 audit report data provided by the China National Audit Office and plans nationwide rollout. A center official said, "Our goal is to build the largest 'AI intelligent body factory' in central China."
Nearby, CPU manufacturer Loongson Technology is also located. For CPUs, the brain of the computer, Intel and AMD split the market, but Loongson has succeeded in domesticating them and is rapidly catching up with global corporations. Starting as a research project in 2001, Loongson quickly built up technology with generous support from the central government, entered the market in earnest in the 2010s, and in 2022 listed on the STAR Market as the No. 1 Chinese CPU corporations.
At Loongson's Zhongyuan headquarters on the morning of the 9th, a company official demonstrated a performance comparison with Intel CPUs. It compared Loongson's 2023 CPU and its self-developed operating system with Intel's 2020 CPU and Windows 10. Opening a 50 MB document took Loongson less than a second and Intel more than three seconds. Although it was difficult to compare technological prowess because the Loongson and Intel CPU model release periods differed, the official said, "It proves that the performance gap between Chinese CPUs and global big-company CPUs has narrowed."
According to the company, Loongson's biggest feature is that it has its own instruction set architecture. A Loongson official said, "If you have an instruction set, you can build the entire information industry system. That's because it is the foundation of the ecosystem," and added, "Beyond the Intel system and ARM and Android, we must build a system of our own. Loongson aims to build this and break the monopoly on the technology ecosystem."