China is advancing in business model innovations, but work still needs to be done in technology innovation, said Liu Shijin, a former vice president of the Development Research Center of the State Council at the China Development Forum in Beijing recently.
Liu said China has the largest market in the world, and the demands are increasing each day, which makes it easy for a business to succeed, for instance, e-commerce giant Alibaba and Internet behemoth Tencent. However, some tech companies are falling behind their Western counterparts.
While market scale is an advantage of China, R&D on technology and education are areas requiring the most effort to make the business of the Internet and e-commerce giants sustainable, he said "China is supposed to step up its opening up of its service sectors, including information services, logistics, finance, medical, education, culture, sports and entertainment, among others."
Fabrice Boyer, the CEO of Altran China & South East Asia, a world leading professional services company specializing in automobiles, aviation and energy, said in an exclusive interview with the China Fortune Media Group that"innovation needs market scale and China is perfect for this. At the same time, Chinese policies are favorable for applications of technologies and R&D, especially in first-tier cities. For instance, in the automobile sectors where we are dedicated, the Chinese government's regulations have strongly driven the implementation of new energy vehicles (NEVs) and autonomous driving, in line with the country's efforts towards building green and smart cities. We have also observed Chinese companies are transferring intellectual properties to other nations and we are impressed by the growth of the Chinese manufacturing companies' capabilities in innovation."
"It is interesting to see the areas of automotive, telecommunications and semiconductors converging. For instance, to be automatic, you need 5G and other technologies to work together."
Boyer, however, warned that startups sometimes are too keen to succeed while innovations may need a long time to reach their practical applications and they need to learn how to work step by step.
Accenture, a global professional services company, discovered that only seven percent out of the 450 companies they surveyed in China had realized a transformation to digitalization in its latest survey. "It implies that China's digitalization of companies is at a very early stage," said the survey.
Zhu Wei, chairman of Accenture Greater China, said there was significant potential to improve the level of digitalization in the manufacturing sector, especially in the areas of electronics, automotive, chemical engineering, and metallurgy, among others in a keynote speech at the China Development Forum.
While intelligent technologies help companies in efficiency improvement and lowering their costs, digitalized products could facilitate these companies' innovations in new business models, Zhu said.
Latest comments