Eastern China's Anhui province plans to strengthen research and development into artificial intelligence to value the regional sector at over CNY15 billion (USD2.3 billion) by 2020. The program will center around an industry park specialized in speech recognition, China Speech Valley, in the provincial capital Hefei, state-owned news agency Xinhua reported. The scheme will support companies, universities and research institutes to broaden applications in agriculture, manufacturing, education, medicine and urban management. "China Speech Valley will provide the scientific and education resources," said Qi Dongfeng, head of operations at the park. "The program will focus on industrial applications up and down the supply chain, with research directed at chips, algorithms, smart voice products and intelligent sensors."