At the 3rd Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, China announced its support for eight high-quality Belt and Road initiatives, leading the Belt and Road Initiative to a new level of high-quality development. Among the eight actions, expand market access for digital products, deepen reforms in the fields of state-owned enterprises, digital economy, intellectual property rights, and procurement, hold the "Global Digital Expo" every year, and release the Global Artificial Intelligence Governance Initiative, etc., and repeatedly mention relevant content about digital information.
Professor Li Xiaodong, founder of Fuxi Think Tank, researcher of the Institute of Computing Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and director of the Internet Governance Research Center of Tsinghua University, accepted an exclusive interview with the Financial Associated Press.
Finance Associated Press:What are the signals from the eight actions related to digital information?
Li Xiaodong:More than 20 heads of state, heads of state, heads of international organizations, etc. attended the "Belt and Road" Forum for International Cooperation, China used this platform to systematically put forward China's proposals, emphasizing the digital economy, focusing on promoting digital technology, and attaching great importance to artificial intelligence, China will make great achievements in the field of information infrastructure, including data infrastructure.
About the digital economy. Under the dual carbon goals of carbon peak by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060, China will basically achieve the long-term goal of socialist modernization by 2035 and build a prosperous, strong, democratic, civilized and harmonious modern socialist country by 2049. The only option under this two-way pressure is the digital economy, because the digital economy is a green and efficient development path that can significantly save energy, reduce emissions and reduce carbon emissions. The digital economy can greatly reduce resource consumption in two aspects, and the double superposition has an obvious reduction effect: first, it can effectively connect supply and demand, shift from "producer-centric" to "consumer-centric" to avoid overproduction;The second is to replace reduced manufacturing with incremental manufacturing, and significantly reduce the consumption of natural resources and energy in the production and manufacturing process.
The development path of digital economy chosen by China can solve the problem of China's sustainable and rapid development, as well as the problem of developing countries in the Belt and Road Initiative that pursue high-quality economic development like China but also have two-way pressure. It is hoped that the Belt and Road countries can choose this path of digital economy development together, and China can also contribute its own development experience and share the benefits of the Belt and Road cooperation.
About the numbers**. Digital covers the field of digital technology, but more importantly, the digitization of the data, all of which are highly dependent on the transmission and aggregation of information, and information is based on data.
The form of data is not necessarily digital, but digital data will greatly promote the ** in both time and space. If China wants to do a good job in digital **, it is also looking at its own shortcomings, and the "Provisions on Regulating and Facilitating Cross-border Data Flow (Draft for Comments)" proposed by the Cyberspace Administration of China is related to this, which is a very positive and pragmatic signal, demonstrating China's agile governance capabilities in the field of data.
Finance Associated Press:At this forum, China released the Global Artificial Intelligence Governance Initiative. According to your observations, in terms of artificial intelligence, what cooperation can be expected between China and the "Belt and Road" countries?
Li Xiaodong:Artificial intelligence is a systematic capability that integrates various digital technologies into Dacheng, including computing power, algorithms and data, and digital technology and the Internet have supported the development and maturity of artificial intelligence. Although there are some artificial barriers to the development of artificial intelligence in the world, China has almost all the capabilities in the artificial intelligence industry chain, including software, hardware, chips, system services, etc., and will use artificial intelligence to drive the development of the digital industry in the future and promote the digital transformation of economic and social development, so China advocates strong cooperation in the field of artificial intelligence.
The importance of ChatGPT, which is popular this year, in the field of digital technology, is like nuclear energy in the energy field, which is a breakthrough in nature, so it has attracted widespread attention and extreme popularity in the world. At present, in addition to the gap in computing power and algorithms, although China has a large amount of data, a large amount of high-knowledge density data is still in the hands of Western developed countries, and there is still a large gap between the cross-domain sharing ability and knowledge density level of data and the United States.
China can jointly build data infrastructure with the Belt and Road countries in specific areas, for example, to promote open data exchange and cross-domain sharing, to make up for weaknesses with strengths, and to promote data sharing in more than 150 countries along the Belt and Road, which must be a process of common development and multi-party benefits.
Finance Associated Press:How do you view the future development space of China's digital economy?
Li Xiaodong:At present, China's digital economy accounts for about 40% of GDP, which is still a gap compared with developed countries in Europe and the United States, but China has a good foundation for development in the field of infrastructure and should focus on giving full play to its advantages, especially in the field of information infrastructure.
We often say that the three major infrastructure, the first is the field of transportation and logistics, the second is the field of energy transmission, and the third is the field of information network, in which China has a strong foundation: in the field of logistics infrastructure, the total mileage of highways and high-speed railways ranks first in the world;In the field of energy infrastructure, China ranks first in the world in terms of installed capacity of water, wind and solar renewable energy and ultra-high voltage hybrid power gridIn the field of information infrastructure, China has built the world's largest optical fiber and mobile broadband network, with full 5G coverage in all urban areas. The three major infrastructures are the foundation for promoting economic development, the integration and development between the three, information infrastructure accompanies the development of energy infrastructure, energy infrastructure coordinates the deployment of logistics infrastructure, and digital technology comprehensively promotes the development of energy infrastructure and logistics infrastructure, China's smart grid and smart logistics are leading in the world.
The integrated development of these three infrastructures will promote many innovations in the future, such as new energy intelligent networked vehicles will become an important urban infrastructure, which is not only a core component of logistics infrastructure, but also an important energy storage platform for energy infrastructure, and more likely to become an edge computing system for information infrastructure. China's new energy vehicle production and sales accounted for more than 60% of the global sales, ranking first in the world for eight consecutive years.