Matrix Report
China is trending to be a global leader in digital technologies. As a major worldwide investor in innovative technologies and one of the world’s leading adopters, it is already shaping the global digital landscape.
With the boom of a digital economy back in 2013, Artificial Intelligence became popular in the entire world. In order to maintain competitive advantage, China wanted to focus on introducing new competitors to the market. This began when Google’s AI beat the world gaming champion, Ke Jie, at the historical Go match.
Since domination in the digital space was a major goal for China, they have been quick with introducing new technologies. In 2014-15, they introduced their 4G Networks and made customers their number one priority. Tencent played a huge role in this success, since the biggest tech giant of China was far more advanced than its competitors.
Similarly, the introduction of 5G by Chinese smartphone producer, Huawei, has also helped China maintain a competitive advantage. Companies such as Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu have invited several billions into the economy to promote the tech ecosystem – primarily focusing on Artificial Intelligence.
The Chinese government released a “Next Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan” in 2017 to lay out a plan for the next several years. The keyword in the government’s work report, went from “internet plus” to “intelligent plus”, giving everyone the idea that the government’s sole priority in the technology sector is the advancement of AI.
We can already see the effects that digitization has had on China – it is the largest e-commerce economy in the world. For example, Alibaba’s Singles Day has been the biggest online sale, beating Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Similarly, WeChat raises 30$ billion in a year. A prominent feature being that it helps people pay without exchange of physical cash. If China keeps advancing at this pace, it will soon become a world leader in AI.
