2017 China International Big Data Expo Opens in Guiyang

The 2017 China International Big Data Expo opened last Friday in Guiyang, capital city of southwest China's Guizhou Province.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang sent a congratulatory letter, while Vice Premier Ma Kai addressed the opening ceremony.

Premier Li pointed out that the digital economy is transforming mankind's way of production and living and is increasingly becoming a new engine powering economic growth. Guizhou Province followed the trend and pioneered in the process with remarkable fruits. China is willing to work with other countries to promote innovation and cooperation in digital economy.

Data has become one important fundamental and strategic resource and China should go further in big data innovative application to speed up transforming the manufacturing sector, according to Ma Kai.

With "Digital Economy Drives New Growth" as the theme, this year's expo will feature two summits, one exhibition and one contest. A total of 78 forums and 15 other activities will be held throughout the Expo.

Five high-end conferences on topics of machine intelligence, artificial intelligence, smart manufacturing, e-commerce and blockchain will be held during the summits.

As the first exhibition in the world with a theme centered around big data, the Guiyang Big Data Expo has now been successfully held for two years in a row. The previous expos have attracted investment worth 58.9 billion yuan (US$ 8.6 billion) to Guizhou Province. The Expo became a national-level event in 2016.

Applicants for the Expo exceed 50,000, who come from 23 countries. Meanwhile, over 1,000 cutting-edge products, technologies and solutions are displayed brought by about 316 exhibitors from both home and abroad, according to the organizer.

Among the six exhibition halls, Hall 1 to Hall 5 exhibit the latest innovations and achievements and high-tech products in big data from world-renowned internet companies such as Oracle, Alibaba, Huawei, SAP, Foxconn and JD.com, while Hall 6 is designed as featured experience hall for VR, AR and AI.

A number of futuristic technologies were unveiled in the exhibition hall, such as the Driverless Magnetic Unit of central air-conditioning invented by Haier, the AR red envelope from Tencent and the latest lip-reading recognition technology from Hydata.

The Guizhou provincial government rolled out a development strategy for big data in 2014, with the big data digital information sector scoring a 62-percent year-on-year growth in market scale that year. Guizhou's GDP totaled over 900 billion yuan in 2014, achieving the growth target outlined in the 12th Five-Year Plan one year earlier.