5th Digital China Summit achieves fruitful results

By Liu Xiaoyu, Shi Yu, Source: People’s Daily

The 5th Digital China Summit concluded with fruitful results in Fuzhou, capital of east China’s Fujian province on July 24.

The two-day summit included 18 sub-forums on hot issues in digital technologies, as well as more than 30 featured activities. More than 100 academicians and experts, and 100 big names in the digital industry participated.

It was also attended by representatives from over 1,000 Chinese and foreign enterprises. Nearly 2,000 guests joined in-depth negotiations over digital technologies and future cooperation.

The summit aimed to demonstrate the latest achievements in China’s digital construction, with 565 project agreements signed and a total investment value of 299 billion yuan ($44.28 billion), covering 5G, Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, industrial internet, cybersecurity and satellite applications. These projects are expected to give a boost to China’s digital industrialization and industrial digitalization.

A special achievements exhibition with an area of more than 200,000 square meters took place, where nearly 500 exhibitors showcased their achievements.

A low-power wearable navigation and motion sensing system was displayed by the State Key Laboratory of Information Engineering in Surveying, Mapping and Remote Sensing of Wuhan University. The system, as small as a bottle cap, can be used to track real-time information on firefighters’ rescue missions and monitor the positions of workers at construction sites.

On a big screen in the exhibition hall, targeted orders were sent to volunteers serving the exhibition through a service management system by the command center of a young volunteers association in Fuzhou. Combining online order making, services evaluation, and volunteer dispatching, the updated digital system is both efficient and environmentally friendly.

In a smart power protection center, information such as weather conditions, load rate of power protection equipment and alarms were displayed visually. The summit for the first time adopted a digital twin power grid and the power system was automatically inspected by smart robots, which helped reduce 50 percent of the support personnel.

The Digital China Summit has been successfully held for five years in a row in Fuzhou since 2018. It is an important platform driving China’s digital construction.

From 2018 to 2021, China moved up its ranking at the Global Innovation Index from 17th to 12th, and the country’s digital economy grew from 31.3 trillion yuan to more than 45 trillion yuan. The proportion of the digital economy in China’s GDP also rose from 34.8 percent to 39.8 percent.

According to a digital development report released by the Cyberspace Administration of China on July 23, China has built the world’s largest and most technologically advanced network infrastructure. With rapidly rising innovation capability in digital technologies, the country has become a frontrunner in emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and quantum information, the report said.

Last year, industrial internet was applied in 45 major categories of China’s national economy, with a total output of over one trillion yuan. Digitalization has driven down costs by 17.6 percent and increased revenue by 22.6 percent for manufacturing enterprises.

At present, digital technology is moving toward a new stage featuring intensive application, regulated development and shared benefits, said Yu Xiaohui, head of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, during the summit. Industrial digitalization has become a major development direction of the digital economy, he added.