Chinese advantages in tech to benefit other continents
Internet-based technologies including artificial intelligence are gaining momentum in China, and are expected to benefit more people not only in the country but across the world, industry insiders said.
“New momentum is emerging in China with the rollout of 5G, AI and the industrial internet,” said Wu Hequan, an academician at the Chinese Academy of Engineering in Beijing.
In the AI sector, Wu noted, voice recognition and facial recognition technologies are already widely used in China with the rapid development of high-tech companies, from startups such as Yitu Technology to market leaders such as iFlytek.
The Hefei, Anhui-based iFlytek, for instance, has optimized its years of expertise in AI-enabled voice recognition and machine-based translation products.
“AI is a crucial driver of industrial upgrading and technological advancement in China. This year will see AI creating real value in more sectors,” said Liu Qingfeng, the company’s chairman.
One of its products to offer translation services is popular among foreigners.
The smart translator can recognize voices and automatically transcribe oral speech into text. It can also translate between languages in real time.
China is implementing a national AI development plan that aims to build a 1 trillion yuan ($141.1 billion) AI core industry by 2030, which is supposed to stimulate as much as 10 trillion yuan in related businesses.
A report from consultancy firm PwC forecasts that AI will contribute $15.7 trillion to the global economy in 2030 and China will be among the biggest beneficiaries of that, with a 26 percent boost to its GDP in 2030.
During this process, AI is also driving more companies to bring benefits to people. China’s TAL Education Group, for instance, has been leveraging AI to help more students in rural areas of China.
“We are striving to advance education through internet-based technologies. We are also promoting large-scale, low-cost and high-quality online education to help more students across China,” said Michael Wan, executive president of TAL.
The company has developed an AI-enabled smart class solution called Wisroom, which works like a futuristic class where teachers can teach online while students’ reactions including voice, gestures and facial expressions are analyzed in real time.
By May, such intelligent classrooms were used in three projects in the Ningxia Hui autonomous region to help improve local education quality.
The World Internet Conference will offer a platform for showcasing China’s willingness to deepen international cooperation, especially in the 5G era when almost everything will be connected to the internet, company executives said.
Ericsson China President Zhao Juntao said the annual internet event, to be held in Wuzhen, Zhejiang province, from Oct 20 to 22, is an “excellent” platform for China to demonstrate its willingness to seek win-win results and strengthen global collaboration with a more open mind.
“The mobile communication industry calls for collaboration across the industry chain. From the perspective of the formulation of 5G standards and the development of 5G networks and applications, the flourishing of the mobile communication industry is impossible without the open mind and winwin attitude of industry players worldwide,” Zhao said.
In the 5G era, the Ericsson executive said more efforts are needed to further collaborate with each other in planning and operations. The influence of 5G will go beyond consumption to enter various industries and 5G has become the key pillar in the development of the digital economy.
“As a world leader in 5G, we believe that, only by deepening understanding across all industries and working together with each other, we can make significant progress in China’s digital transformation and industry upgrading,” Zhao said.
China officially granted licenses for commercial use of 5G on June 6. The nation is set to become the world’s largest 5G market by 2025, with 460 million 5G users, a forecast by industry group the Global System for Mobile Communications Association said.
This year’s Light of the Internet Expo, an exhibition that kicked off on Friday ahead of the sixth World Internet Conference, also focuses on enhancing the experiences of visitors and users by introducing technologies and products that integrate 5G, AI and VR with the daily lives of people.
More than 100 overseas internet enterprises have attended the expo, marking a steady rise from last year’s 81 overseas participants, signifying the growing international influence of the event.
Microsoft China Chairman and CEO Alain Crozier said Chinese companies are enhancing their global competitiveness through technological innovation. There is huge potential in both domestic and international markets.
“We will continue to innovate with China, with Chinese companies and partners, with our cloud platform, innovation ecosystem of more than 17,000 partners, big data, internet of things and artificial intelligence technologies — providing seamless connectivity in a cooperative, collaborative way to help people and organizations in China achieve more,” Crozier said.
Zhao Ming, president of Honor, a key smartphone brand of Huawei Technologies, said China has been pioneering the world in developing 5G smartphones and commercializing the superfast technology.
China is getting increasingly intertwined with the rest of the world in deepening international cooperation, Zhao added.