Emerging technologies and smart cities

Mr Chen Dongping, President of Shenzhen Big Data Research Institute of Smart City, and Chair of Beijing International Artificial Intelligence Research Institute

“A smart city is defined as the continuous implementation of human wisdom to city governance and development. It is about the human-centric development of a city through the integration of new technologies and new ideas.”

What is a 'smart city'?

Searching ‘smart city’ on the Internet returns hundreds of different definitions. Most of these describe a smart city in terms of the technology that is used, such as Artificial Intelligence. But these definitions are short-sighted. What happens in the future as new technologies are developed? Do we have to change our definition again and again as new technologies are created?

Smart cities are not about technology. The definition must be in terms of the way in which a city is managed. I see a smart city as the continuous implementation of human wisdom to city governance and development. It is about the human-centric development of a city through the integration of new technologies and new ideas. It is about new ways of management to enable people to live better lives in cities.

What is the role of smart cities around the world?

To understand the importance of smart cities we need to consider government responsibilities in China and in the western world. Their decisions and actions are quite different.

For example, the mayor of a city like London is not directly responsible for the economic and cultural development of the city. Economic development in western countries is driven by market powers. But the mayor of a city like Shanghai has responsibility for the development of everything. Different official duties lead to different decisions.

Furthermore, the population in China is huge. Guangdong province has a population of around 90 million people. However, when you take into account people who come into the province to work, the number of people grows to more than 110 million. It is the government’s responsibility to support their education, medical care and housing needs by creating adequate conditions in Guangdong.

The population has grown but the government is still the same size. This means that to manage the increased demand, the Chinese government must adopt new ways like smart cities to provide the necessary support. So, for the Chinese government, it is not whether or not to use new smart city technologies, they have to. Therefore, we are seeing the very fast development of smart cities in China.

How are the technologies integrated into smart cities influencing people’s behaviour?

It is interesting to see how new technology can have a great impact on the progress of society. Even in ancient times, new inventions brought different influences.

The same technology can bring about different results in different civilisations. A good example today is electronic payment. In the west, people are familiar with credit cards, so the adoption of electronic payment technology has not brought about a huge change. In China though, we have seen astonishing growth in its use, with more than 0.6 billion users and more than 170 billion Yuen worth of electronic transactions being made daily, just on Wechat pay.

In China people have found that ecommerce brings a new level of fairness and convenience to their lives. Previously, people in rural areas and cities could not easily share in a common market – now they get the same price and quality.

Each year, 11th November is Alibaba’s Singles’ Day, a popular shopping day in China similar to Black Friday in the west. It is the world’s biggest online shopping event. In 2013, turnover during the day was 4.7 billion US dollars and 24% of transactions were made over mobile. In 2018, it was 31.9 billion US dollars. In 2018, 93.6% of transactions were made over mobile, nearly quadruple that in 2013, showing how people have switched from PC to mobile. Moreover, in 2018, 60.3% mobile pay transactions were through fingerprint identification and facial identification. Biological identification payment is coming.

The Internet has brought about enormous change. In the past, productivity depended on human resources. But in the digital age, data, networks, cloud, bandwidth, storage and other technologies are also becoming very important for productivity. The Chinese government is being forced to understand that data networks are a fundamental influence on productivity. If we don’t pay attention to this, we will lose opportunities.

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The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the interviewee and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Airbus.