Themed “New Era, New Journey — Digital China, Smart Society,” the Fourth China Smart City International Expo 2018 officially kicked off in Shenzhen yesterday.
From yesterday to tomorrow, more than 40 academicians gather in the city for discussions, and over 400 institutions and enterprises offering services related to building smart cities participate in the expo.
Shenzhen Mayor Chen Rugu delivered a welcome speech at the opening ceremony.
According to Chen, smart city represents the new trend of urban development. It bears the expectation that science and technology can change the way we live and adds new impetus to high-quality economic development.
“The city government has made building a smart city a key task and strives to further accelerate the construction of information networks and service infrastructure, such as the Internet, IoT [Internet of Things] and cloud computing,” Chen said.
Peng Sen, former deputy director of the National Development and Reform Commission, said that smart city is not a simple concept. Instead, it is a new model that makes full use of new technologies, such as cloud computing, big data, the Internet, artificial intelligence and blockchain, to promote urban planning and management.
“Over the past few years, China has made remarkable achievements in the construction of smart cities. So far, a total of 500 cities have explicitly proposed gearing up their transformation into new smart cities,” Peng said.
In addition to well-equipped functional areas, the expo has set up four major exhibition areas, which showcase the latest achievements as well as solutions and applications in building new smart cities.
With an exhibition area of more than 30,000 square meters, the expo also displays some outstanding cases from home and abroad of the exploration of building new smart cities, achievements in developing a digital economy, and cutting-edge technologies, such as VR and AR.
“I think building a smart city is both an opportunity and a challenge. It’s the right direction when you think about the future,” said Ferran Ginette, founder of a Spanish company that provides environmental solutions in the fields of soil remediation and water pollution.
He has come to the expo to seek potential partners. “I think there will be an increasing market for environmental solutions in China in the next few years. I’m also here to look for Chinese solutions that can be applied in Spain and Europe,” said Ginette.
The expo is hosted by China Center for Urban Development, the Shenzhen government, Ping An Insurance (Group) Company of China, Ltd. and Smart City Development Alliance.
Concurrent activities include the 269th China Engineering Science and Technology Forum and 12th China Engineering Management (Smart City) Forum, where academicians from the Chinese Academy of Engineering join hundreds of industry experts to offer suggestions on building smart cities.
