Beijing eyes bigger digital role in belt and road plan
Chinese government officials yesterday trumpeted the country’s progress in shaping digital development models for Belt and Road Initiative member states, taking aim at US policies amid intensifying rivalry with the West.
In keynote addresses to the Digital Silk Road Development Forum in Xian, capital of Shaanxi province, officials said that, through concerted efforts, China had strengthened and accelerated a series of digital development initiatives for countries that were part of the belt and road strategy.
China had signed a raft of strategic deals with the member states to work together on areas from e-commerce to digital infrastructure, Wang Yong, vice-chairman of the 14th Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference national committee, said at the forum.
“[China will] cooperate [with nations] to develop an open and inclusive digital economy.”
Beijing would share its developmental dividends of the digital economy with nations in the belt and road plan, Wang added. It would also promote mutual connectivity and strengthen the digital supply chain while maintaining an open, fair, non-discriminatory digital business environment, he added.
The official also called for closer technological partnerships in areas including artificial intelligence (AI), cloud computing, big data, blockchain and quantum computing.
“As a responsible big nation, China is willing to work together with other countries to further advance our technological sharing and oppose technological blockades and development decoupling … to have digital and smart life benefit more nations and more people,” he said.
Wang made his appeal in the face of restrictions from Washington, which has been looking to curb China’s technological advance. The United States has escalated sanctions in recent years and forged alliances to enforce restrictions on the export of critical technologies to China.
The forum was co-hosted by the World Internet Conference (WIC), a Beijing-based agency that promotes China’s vision for cyberspace, and the Shaanxi provincial government. China launched the digital Silk Road initiative in 2015 to incorporate digital elements to its belt and road plan to boost connectivity.
WIC chair Zhuang Rongwen, who also heads the Cyberspace Administration of China, promoted the country’s internet governance practices, calling for China-led global digital governance.
“Looking into the future, we should formulate and develop global digital governance norms and standards ... advancing policies for the digital economy and cybersecurity … facing challenges and security risks together,” Zhuang said.
The rapid development of generative AI, found in products like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, including those from Chinese big tech firms, also warranted more scrutiny, Wang said.
“The digital technology breakthroughs such as generative AI not only opened new space for production and our lives, but also brought in multiple governance challenges,” he said.
Wang encouraged other nations to join the AI governance initiative announced in October, with the principle of “negotiating, developing, and sharing together” for the benefit of humanity.
The theme of this year’s digital Silk Road forum is mutual connectivity and common prosperity, with a focus on three areas: developing connectivity and narrowing the digital divide, cross-border e-commerce, and rural digital infrastructure initiatives.
Baidu’s artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot Ernie Bot has attracted more than 200 million users, according to co-founder and chief executive Robin Li Yanhong, as the race to commercialise the technology heats up in China.
Ernie Bot reached the milestone just 13 months after its launch, with enterprise client numbers exceeding 85,000, Li said at Baidu’s AI developer conference in Shenzhen yesterday.
At the conference, Li introduced three tools based on Ernie – the large language model (LLM) behind Baidu’s ChatGPT-like service – for developers to build applications, AI agents, and models, in some cases without the need to know how to code.
“[The] LLM itself doesn’t create value directly, and only AI apps developed [using LLMs] can meet the real market demand,” he said.
Baidu is playing a leading role in trying to generate revenues and profits from AI chatbot in the mainland’s relatively closed market, with more than 200 LLMs jostling for space.
Ernie was released in March last year as China’s first answer to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which is not available on the mainland, home to the world’s biggest internet population.
There has since been a frenzy over AI in the country, with tech giants and start-ups developing their own models.
One of the rapidly growing players is Moonshot AI. The firm has launched the Kimi Chat smart chatbot that was built on its self-developed Moonshot LLM, which can process as many as 200,000 Chinese characters in a context window.
The company raised more than US$1 billion in a new funding round led by e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding and venture capital firm HongShan, at a valuation of about US$2.5 billion, according to Chinese media reports. Alibaba owns the Post.
China had 254 LLMs as of November last year, according to a white paper published by the Beijing Municipal Science and Technology Commission.
But Baidu’s Li has previously criticised the frenzy over LLMs as a “huge waste of resources”. At an event in Shenzhen in November, he said there were too many LLMs in China “but too few AI-native applications based on those models”.
Baidu unveiled an updated version of Ernie Bot during its annual technology conference last October, which Li said at the time was comparable to OpenAI’s GPT-4. The firm launched a paid version of Ernie 4.0 in November for 59.90 yuan (HK$65) a month, part of efforts to accelerate commercialisation of its chatbot.
At the company’s earnings call in February, Li said Ernie achieved “breakthroughs in monetisation” in 2023. Revenue from its generative AI services and related businesses reached 656 million yuan in the fourth quarter, representing about 7.8 per cent of total cloud service revenue of 8.6 billion yuan.