Photo: Courtesy of the organizing committee of the 5th Digital China Summit

Chinese facilitation of digital transformation, a booming new economic area after the COVID-19 epidemic, comes at a crucial time when the world is facing rising challenges and complexity, and those who can govern core technologies and their broad application will be better able to secure the safety of supply chains, experts and industry insiders said on the sideline of the 5th Digital China Summit on Sunday.

Hosted in East China's Fujian, a manufacturing and trade hub in Southern China, the two-day summit, from Saturday to Sunday, showcases the latest achievements for digitalization in China, with self-developed products taking center stage, as the nation strives to secure a high quality and sustainable economic development, and the broad application of self-dependent technologies viewed as key to make this a reality. 

It is necessary to use digital transformation to bring about reforms in mode of production, mode of life and mode of governance, Huang Kunming, a member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and head of the Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee, said in a video speech at the opening ceremony on Saturday.

Huang called on local governments and enterprises to seize new opportunities, deal with new challenges and create new advantages created by a wave of digital development.

From 2017 to 2021, the scale of China's digital economy has grown from 27 trillion yuan to over 45 trillion, ranking second in the world, while the proportion of the digital economy expressed as a total of GDP has increased from 33 to 39.8 percent.

Driven by the trend, the event in Fuzhou, acting as a window into China's digital development, put on display some notable achievements. Since it was first held in 2018, over 1,400 digital related projects have been signed based on this platform, representing total investment of up to one trillion yuan.

This year's summit maintains this positive trend, with 18 sub-forums held on new technologies, and a physical exhibition of more than 200,000 square meters also taking place where nearly 500 exhibitors showcased their new achievements in digital technology on the spot, most of them are self-developed technologies.

Among the participating companies, ZTE showcased many cutting-edge high-end technologies, including the company's key future-oriented operating system OS, which has shipped over 250 million sets and is widely used in more than 160 countries and regions around the world. 

A manager from ZTE told the Global Times at the summit that the company's independent operating systems is a new and competitive growth point.

"We understand that the operating system is the core, and no hardware can run without it," he said, explaining the reason for getting into the sector.

Another key breakthrough that the company displayed at the event is the self-developed distributed database systems and their wide applications, including in the financial sector, an area that has become increasingly focused on data security.

"When we talked about databases, the market had long been dominated by a few foreign players, especially in financial industry, in the past few decades...but we see that it is very important for domestic financial institutions to always grasp their core data, which is what ZTE has been doing from a very early stage, and now our database services have achieved full self-reliance, with independent research and development technologies," the representative said.

While this has been a very tough year due to the epidemic, inflation and other factors, semiconductor companies have lost ground to varying degrees, according to media reports. Si Da, Vice President and Chief Brand Officer of worldwide leading display company BOE Technology Group, told the Global Times on Saturday that the company has been able to grow despite the challenges, and now Chinese technology companies are more competitive in the global arena.

BOE regards self-dependence as a key capability for sustainable growth. As one of the world's largest company of LCDs, OLEDs and flexible displays, the company showcased its latest 8K ultra-high-definition screen, together with many other advanced self-developed technologies and devices, at the event.

"Many Chinese technology products have fully reached a world leading level, noting that what they are doing is to lead the high standard of technology instead of being a follower." Si said.