Digital Economy Drives New Growth

Updated: May 8, 2019 Source: Belt and Road Portal
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Big Data Expo 2017, with the annual theme "Digital Economy Leads New Growth, Green Development Creates a New Future", was the first edition of Big Data Expo after it was upgraded to a national exposition. Focusing on "two concurrent conferences, one exhibition, one contest and other activities", with an exhibition area of 60,000 square meters, Big Data Expo 2017 delivered 156 activities including opening ceremony, high-level dialogues, e-commerce summit, professional forums, professional exhibitions, achievement release, contract signing and visits, brought together 316 domestic and foreign enterprises and institutions, and attracted over 87,000 participants.

Many citizens queue up to receive security check outside the venue of Big Data Expo 2017

A total of 514 guests from 20 countries participated in Big Data Expo 2017 from May 26 to 29, 47.1 percent of whom were CTOs, chief scientists and key researchers of world-renowned enterprises and research institutes in relevant fields such as big data, internet, AI and blockchain. Participants contain 152 senior executives of world-renowned internet and big data enterprises such as Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Intel, Oracle, IBM, Dell, Cisco, Qualcomm and NTT. Seven out of the world top 10 internet enterprises participated in the exposition, including 4 domestic enterprises and 3 out of 6 foreign enterprises. 35 big data scientists from Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, Yale University, University of California Berkeley, Imperial College London, National Institute of Information Technology and other world-renowned universities brought their latest research findings. The British, US and Israeli embassies in China planned and hosted sub-forums, and led nearly 40 high-tech enterprises in fields such as commercial application of big data intelligence, big data innovation technology and infrastructure, and smart cities.

What’s more, participants contain 44 heads of 33 renowned international organizations such as UNDP China, Global System for Mobile communications Association (GSMA), the National Association of Software and Services Companies and the World Economic Forum.

Professional forums saw the collision of new industrial concepts and ideas among tycoons and elitists. The leaders of BAT (Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent) were divided on technologies. Jack Ma said, "Strong technologies may not be that important today" and "We can do nothing without data"; Robin Li argued that "innovation and technologies data are more important than data"; Pony Ma commented that "it is a debate between a student of liberal arts not good at technology and a student of science good at technology" and added, "BAT only appears simultaneously at the World Internet Conference (Wuzhen Summit), Big Data Expo and China (Shenzhen) IT Summit, showing the industrial role of Big Data Expo." 

Big Data Expo 2017 not only released emerging technologies such as blockchain, machine intelligence and VR, but also discussed macro topics like national big data comprehensive pilot zone, digital economy, intelligent manufacturing and data security. Most organizers and speakers were domestic and foreign authorities and celebrities, showing the top level of the exposition in the industry. The exposition presented a big data technology feast to industry insiders and outsiders.

Particularly, high-level dialogues transformed from multi-participant discussions into personal speeches. Focusing on "digital economy", "industrial big data and intelligent manufacturing", "machine intelligence", "AI", "blockchain" and other frontier topics, five high-level dialogues were customized for domestic and foreign business leaders like Jack Ma, Pony Ma, Robin Li, Terry Gou and Derek Aberle, brought together a number of industrial tycoons, academicians and experts, and became a focus of attention. 

Focusing on big data industry development and advanced technologies, Big Data Expo 2017 released some new technologies represented by "Top 10 black technologies", some new theories represented by Blue Book of Big Data, some new products represented by "Xiaoi Robot", new cases represented by Outstanding Big Data Products, Services and Application Solutions Case Set and other books, some new standards represented by "Top 10 New Terms of Big Data" and the list of Chinese big data unicorn enterprises. Blockchain, AI and other advanced technologies became focuses of attention among attendees.

Big Data Expo 2017 attracted some leading and iconic major projects. The preliminary statistics show that Guizhou government signed 360 projects with a total contract amount of 53.355 billion yuan and Guiyang signed 244 projects with a total contract amount of 30.9 billion yuan. Apple iCloud Project has a total investment of over 5 billion yuan. As Apple's only iCloud service operator in mainland China, Guizhou-Cloud Big Data will provide iCloud service to Apple's 250 million Chinese users and achieve annual revenues of over 500 million yuan after going into operation.

Editor: 曹家宁