Premier Li Keqiang on Wednesday urged the government to stop its monopoly on data and information and give the public access to them, part of an effort to make China a major player of the global technological revolution.
The world has never been so connected, and the development of the IT industry represented by big data, cloud computing and the Internet of Things (IoT) are all considered part of the global technological revolution, Li said at the opening ceremony of the China Big Data Industry Summit, also known as Big Data Expo 2016, in Guiyang, Southwest China's Guizhou Province.
However, "the government still holds 80 percent of the information," Li said, noting that except those related to national security, business secrets and personal privacy, the rest should be opened to the public to make governance more efficient, he noted.
According to the White Paper on Big Data Transactions (2015) released at last year's Big Data Expo, China's big data market reached 76.7 billion yuan ($11.69 billion) in 2014, up 27.8 percent from the previous year. It is expected to surpass 800 billion yuan by 2020.
China's big data industry has much room to develop but lags behind its counterpart in Western countries, Ren Weiwei, research director of Technology Research Center of Beijing-based market consultancy Analysys International, told the Global Times on Wednesday.
Domestic big data companies tend to sort data instead of deeply analyzing them, while foreign firms focus on analyzing big data, Xiang Yang, industry analyst at Beijing-based CCID Consulting, told the Global Times on Wednesday.
Moreover, foreign governments deal with big data firms in providing Internet information services to the public, according to Ren. For example, Palantir Technologies, an American software and services company specializing in big data analysis, plays an important role in helping the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) fight terrorism.
Compared to Western countries, China has a more detailed data management system. Also, it's important to regulate big data, which the government needs to consider," Xiang said.
As data sources and formats become more diverse and complex, Chinese authorities should also learn how to work with different departments to manage the data. However, local governments have their own databases which are not connected, he noted.
In fact, all countries are still in the early stages of exploring the use of big data, Jian Wang, Chairman of the Technology Steering Committee of the Alibaba Group, told the Global Times on Wednesday. "This gives China an equal opportunity to compete," he said.
Foreign tech input
Guizhou is one of China's poorest provinces whose top three exports are fertilizers, tires and liquor.
Li admitted that the Western region is not very developed, but said the big data industry is emerging in the area. He said he is encouraging foreign tech companies to invest in the region, where lower costs would be a major advantage.
Guizhou Province has become a new frontier in the technological revolution, as the big data industry grew by 37.7 percent in 2015 from the previous year, Sun Zhigang, acting provincial governor, said at the summit.
In May 2015, the Global Big Data Exchange, the first of its kind in China, was established in Guizhou Province. The trade volume of this exchange surpassed 60 million yuan in February this year, according to data on its official website gbdex.com.
Guizhou is also offering tax breaks, grants and housing allowances to attract tech investments. A subsidiary of the Tsinghua Unigroup has invested in a cloud-computing platform, and US network tech firm Qualcomm has set up a $280 million joint venture to develop chips for servers, the Wall Street Journal reported.
To boost the big data industry, tech-related subjects should be offered at universities to develop talent, and the government and companies should make more information available for the industry's benefit, Xiang said.