BEIJING, Nov. 19 (Xinhua) -- The recently closed 2nd China-ASEAN AI Summit in south China's Guangxi put China-ASEAN artificial intelligence (AI) cooperation under the spotlight, signaling tremendous market potential ready to be tapped through infrastructure construction, application scenario cooperation, government projects as well as private investment, among others.
China-ASEAN AI cooperation is likely to present opportunities especially through the application of Internet of Everything, industry insiders say.
Huge Infrastructure Market
The ASEAN countries attach strategic importance to five areas including sustainable infrastructure construction, digital innovation, logistics, import and export management, and flow of people under the Master Plan on ASEAN Connectivity 2025. Among them, sustainable infrastructure construction is given top priority and at least 110 billion U.S. dollars of investment is estimated to go into infrastructure by the ASEAN annually for future growth.
Geospatial surveying and mapping acts as an important prerequisite for infrastructure construction, while AI is the trend of geospatial surveying and mapping. The output value of China's geospatial information industry totaled 647.2 billion yuan in 2019, up 8.7 percent year on year, of which the total service value of qualified surveying and mapping units stood at 135.9 billion yuan, representing a year-on-year growth rate of 11.7 percent, according to the report released at the National Geospatial Information Industry Conference 2020.
For China and ASEAN countries among which relevant cooperation has just started, a larger than 10-billion-U.S. dollar scale is projected by industry insiders for China-ASEAN geospatial surveying and mapping market in the next five years.
Trending Digital Economy
In terms of digital innovation, the value of digital technology in the ASEAN is likely to reach 625 billion U.S. dollars by 2030, according to the Master Plan on ASEAN Connectivity 2025, creating huge demand for geospatial surveying and mapping basics and applications.
Moreover, the Initiative on Building ASEAN-China Partnership on Digital Economy released during the the 23rd China-ASEAN leaders' meeting has proposed to strengthen cooperation in digital infrastructure between China and ASEAN countries.
The two sides will enhance cooperation in various areas such as communications, the Internet and satellite navigation, work together to advance the popularization of 4G networks, promote the application of 5G networks, explore ways to expand high-speed Internet access and connectivity at affordable price, including the ASEAN's digital hub support under the framework of the Master Plan on ASEAN Connectivity 2025 to develop the digital economy and bridge the digital gap, according to the Initiative.
It is noted that the importance of the digital economy has been further uncovered in the context of COVID-19. ASEAN has adopted the ASEAN Digital Masterplan 2025, and China is formulating a national plan on IT application for the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-2025). And this year has been designated as the China-ASEAN Year of Digital Economy Cooperation.
Leading tech companies are answering the call of the trending digital economy. Tech giant Huawei, for example, plans to facilitate Thailand to build a digital hub of the ASEAN, according to Deng Feng, General Manager of Huawei Thailand. Huawei is committed to help Thailand forge into the digital age by applying new technologies and new market business models so as to further contribute to the Thailand 4.0 strategy, Deng noted.
Through jointly building the AI infrastructure system, big data center, intelligent computing center, supercomputing center and intelligent corpus and consolidating AI data and computing power infrastructure, China-ASEAN Joint Innovation Center for Internet Application Technology can be used to carry out AI academic exchanges, technological R&D, patent sharing and talent training, according to Lu Dongliang, Chairman and President of China-ASEAN Information Harbor Co., Ltd. (Edited by Niu Huizhe with Xinhua Silk Road, niuhuizhe@xinhua.org)
A single purchase
