An underdeveloped province bets on big data: "Cloud Guizhou" holds 20,000 G
Original title: The big data industry: What the "Guizhou sample" teaches us
At the Guiyang "Big Data Expo," a pocket drone product makes its debut. Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Liu Xu
At the Guiyang "Big Data Expo," children interact with a robot at the "Xiao i Robot" booth. File photo
The 2016 China International Big Data Industry Summit and China E-Commerce Innovation Summit (the "Big Data Expo") closed in Guiyang on May 29. The five-day event drew entrepreneurs large and small from the global big data industry, and the sector's latest achievements and information converged and collided here.
Guizhou, an underdeveloped province that once had nothing to do with high technology, now stands at the forefront of the times. What does the "Guizhou sample" of big data, which "catches up from behind and straightens the curve," teach the Chinese economy?
A choice "created from nothing"
Wu Hequan, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, witnessed the process by which Guizhou decided on its big data industry. In 2012, he came to Guizhou for an international conference, and he and the province's decision-makers reached a consensus: Guizhou could no longer develop energy-intensive industries, and the emerging big data industry was a very good direction. Not long afterward, Guizhou invited him to give a two-and-a-half-hour keynote report on big data. He felt it was precisely then that Guizhou made up its mind to develop big data.
Over these years, what exactly has Guizhou done in the big data industry? Counting from 2013, when the three major telecom operators located their cloud computing and big data centers in Guizhou, the province has claimed 9 national firsts in the big data field: it was the first to build a national big data comprehensive pilot zone, the first to hold the world's first expo themed on big data, the first to propose the concept of block data and explore building a big data platform for block-based aggregation, the first to create a national-level big data industry development cluster, the first to establish a big data exchange, the first to hold a big data business model competition and startup competition, the first to be approved as a national-level big data industry technology innovation pilot zone, the first to issue local big data regulations, and the first to establish a big data strategic key laboratory.
Guizhou seized the initiative and grasped high-end industrial innovation in its own hands, devoting itself to developing big data, cloud computing and the Internet of Things, making "something" out of "nothing" and allowing Guizhou's information-technology-related business formats and products to bloom with vitality.
Action "from top to bottom"
There is an app hailed as "the software application that lets Chinese truck drivers live with more dignity." More than 5 million pieces of cargo information are posted on this platform every day, and in 2015 it saved Chinese truck drivers 50 billion yuan in fuel costs. It is "Huochebang," China's largest road logistics information platform.
When Dai Wenjian, the founder of "Huochebang," started his business, things did not go smoothly; he moved from place to place and his career hit a bottleneck. In 2015 he came to Guiyang and met his turning point. From tens of billions in financing to strong support from Alibaba, "Huochebang" developed rapidly, and today Guiyang, thanks to "Huochebang," has become China's information center for road logistics. Dai Wenjian said Guizhou is very sincere with enterprises doing big data, which fills us with a sense of happiness.
Xu Ning, general manager of Guizhou Gaoxin Yi Yun Technology Co., Ltd., also feels that happiness. This big data enterprise, which provides cloud computing services, came to Guizhou in 2014, and its business development far exceeded his expectations. Xu Ning said: "What moves me most about Guizhou is that the government's collective drive to forge ahead even exceeds that of enterprises. This change in mindset and momentum is the greatest driving force for social progress."
Xi Jianjun, chairman of Guizhou Yaguang Electronic Technology Co., Ltd., is a hardware manufacturer. In 2013, when Guizhou province proposed its big data strategy, he keenly seized the opportunity and became an angel investor in three big data companies. Over the past 3 years, the rapid development of the big data industry has brought him rich returns. "Investors who, like me, have set their sights on the big data industry are becoming more and more numerous in Guizhou, and capital from outside the province is also converging on Guizhou," Xi Jianjun said confidently.
As one of Guizhou's development strategies for the "13th Five-Year Plan," "big data" enjoys unusual "preferential treatment" in Guiyang, in Gui'an New Area and across Guizhou province; even the provincial party secretary often personally "takes the stage" to attract big data investment. Companies such as Qualcomm, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, Alibaba, Tencent and JD.com have entered Guizhou one after another. In the first quarter of this year, the big data industry helped create 40,000 new jobs in Guizhou, the province's total big data industry scale grew 34.8% year on year, and it drove up the province's added value of industrial enterprises above designated size by 0.8 percentage points. At present, Guiyang already has 18 national-level research and development institutions related to big data, 87 enterprise technology centers and talent bases at or above the provincial level, and 243 incubated enterprises. Gui'an New Area completed a total information industry scale of 14.288 billion yuan in 2015, an increase of 1.6 times year on year. Driving industrial development through projects, improving industrial supporting facilities and cultivating industrial clusters, the big data clustering effect and scale effect are gradually emerging in Guizhou.
The path of "straightening the curve"
Academician Wu Hequan believes that the concept of "straightening the curve" put forward for Guizhou's big data development is very scientific. How to build the straightest possible "road" means providing a quality environment for big data enterprises. "I see that the Guizhou government is building the shortest path to big data."
Openness and sharing are prominent features of the big data industry. Guizhou province took the lead by starting with government information and established the country's first provincial-level government data unified storage and sharing platform, "Cloud Guizhou," which has gathered 50,000 G of data.
Guizhou Boda Intelligent Terminal Co., Ltd. is a beneficiary of the Guiyang municipal government's opening of big data resources. This enterprise was founded in August 2013, and today its management and payment system for Guiyang taxis and its citywide traffic and parking management services have reached thousands of households in Guiyang. With the support of the provincial Health and Family Planning Commission, Guizhou Langma Information Co. integrated the province's medical data resources and established "39 Internet Hospital" and "Guiyang Internet Hospital." Using big data and cloud computing technology, online remote consultations are conducted directly at primary health institutions such as pharmacies, community service stations and township health centers equipped with remote terminals, with professional doctors from hospitals diagnosing common and chronic diseases, helping patients enjoy quality medical resources on an equal basis.
Zhao Shilei of the Guizhou Provincial Financial Office is a postdoctoral fellow in finance. He said: "I am from Shandong, and now I am a new Guizhou native. Today there are more and more people like me. During the ten years I have been in Guizhou, I have witnessed and taken part in Guizhou's industrial transformation and upgrading and its process of developing big data. From outsiders not knowing about it and not wanting to come, to those who come not wanting to leave, and college students rushing in, the reason is that Guizhou provides a big stage for outsiders to innovate and start businesses, allowing individuals' innovative ideas to become reality."