Fuzhou New City in the seaside area. [Photo provided to gofujian.com.cn]

Promoting modernization and elevating construction of digital China

Introduction

Fuzhou, capital of Fujian province, is the site of the Sixth Digital China Summit on April 27-28, jointly hosted by the State Internet Information Office, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council and the Fujian provincial government. The Fujian Provincial Office of the Leading Group for Digital Fujian Construction, Fujian Provincial Internet Information Office and Fuzhou municipal government are the organizers.

The summit's theme:

Promoting modernization and elevating construction of Digital China

The summit's content:

The summit will be explored in a "1+3+N" matrix, with "1" referring to forums, including the opening ceremony, main forums, sub-forums, and thematic seminars; "3" referring to "two exhibitions and one competition", including Digital China Construction Achievement Exhibition, the China International Digital Products Expo, and the Digital China Innovation Competition; and "N" referring to a series of featured themed activities, including cloud ecology conferences, industrial Internet ecology conferences, AI ecology conferences, and featured activities such as "Minjiang River Night Talk", "Bless City Of Fuzhou — Dialogue With The Future" and signing ceremonies for significant digital economic projects.

Riding the tide of digital development

Over its history, the summit has fully embraced the role of "Four Platforms" by effectively gathering forces from all sides to promote the construction of a new era of digital China.

The State Internet Information Office, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and other ministries and authoritative institutions have jointly released almost one hundred industry policy papers and analysis reports at the five previous summits, during which nearly 1,500 units have participated and hosted more than 450 media conferences. There have been nearly 150 digital forums and seminars at which more than 1,300 experts and scholars have shared their insights. As well, nearly 2,000 digital economy projects have been signed, with total investment surpassing 1.3 trillion yuan.

This year's summit will spotlight several international exchange activities, inviting participation from such authoritative organizations as UN-Habitat, foreign embassies, government authorities, research institutions and more than 100 multinational corporate entities. All achievement exhibitions and digital expos will offer special areas for international exhibitions.

The practical application of digital innovations will also be showcased. Hardcore technologies such as hyper-realistic virtual humans and "Fuyuan Universe 2.0" will be spotlighted, and the "Two Exhibitions" will display breakthrough achievements in information technology in the Digital Fujian Achievement Exhibition Hall (permanent hall), which will be open to the public.

The nuances of digital platform docking will be explored and discussed as four other provinces and municipalities — Beijing, Ningxia, Shaanxi, and Jiangxi — will participate and conduct in-depth exchanges on digital development and governance experiences. Special activities such as "academicians to the summit" and "the night with big data bureau directors" will be held, and a number of key digital enterprises and major projects will sign contracts for docking.

Digital public services will be widely available as a number of street blocks in Fuzhou will provide 80 quality digital application experiences and distribute AR red envelopes and digital RMB red envelopes. Plans to enhance all citizens' digital literacy and skills will also be introduced.

Regarding the digital ecosystem, multiple industry ecological conferences will be held to promote deep integration of diverse enterprises into the digital economy. An upgraded version of the Fujian big data trading platform will be launched, and heavyweight policies and measures related to the digital economy will be released by relevant national authorities.

As the summit host, Fuzhou has spent five years growing with the event, with the goal of establishing itself as the "No 1 city for digital applications" and "the leading city working for constructing digital China" while earnestly implementing the Digital China and Digital Fujian strategies.

The scale of Fuzhou's digital economy increased from 280 billion yuan in 2018 to over 610 billion yuan in 2022, and its share in GDP has increased from 36 percent to over 50 percent, ranking first in both scale and growth rate in the province. The city has formed a "one cloud, one network, multiple platforms" system for governance support and has promoted the construction of a national pilot project for innovative applications of block chain.

The expansion of digital application scenarios is accelerating. Based on Huawei's cyberverse technology, the "Fuyuan Universe" scenario has been created, realizing multiple national firsts and world-leading achievements. The first large-scale artificial intelligence computing cluster in southeastern China has been built. The transaction volume of digital RMB has exceeded 100 billion yuan, and digital RMB has been applied in the nation's first five application scenarios.