On October 14, 2021, the opening ceremony of the third phase of "Tsinghua-Ali New Business Academy" was held in Beijing. Ms. Wen Jia, President of Public Affairs of Alibaba Group, attended the opening ceremony and delivered a speech in the form of a cloud participant.
The following is the full text of Wen Jia's speech:
Dear Dean Bai Chong'en, dear students of the New Business Academy, hello everyone. I am Wen Jia of Alibaba, and I am very pleased to greet the teachers and students of the third phase of the New Business Academy today through the video Hongyan Chuanshu! The new Business Academy, jointly initiated by Tsinghua School of Economics and Management and Alibaba, has successfully held two sessions. We would like to thank the students of the past two sessions, with their co-creation, our curriculum is more and more perfect, and we also look forward to the third phase of students, your wisdom and experience will inevitably have more ideological innovation.
All of you are leaders in the industry, breaking new ground in their respective fields, and today we are here not to try to teach you how to become more successful in your respective fields, but to try to accompany you to meet the future and prepare for the next era of change.
The general secretary said that this is a major change that has not been seen in a hundred years, our generation is very lucky, the 40 years of reform and opening up have brought great opportunities and space to the development of China's private enterprises, and the birth of the Internet has allowed us to see more possibilities in the future.
We are fortunate to witness the evolution from the industrial age to the digital age. Because of the Internet, cloud computing and big data, the production mode of human society is undergoing major changes. The Internet as an infrastructure will permeate all aspects of society and provide services for any industry in the world. Data has become an indispensable resource of this era like oil and electricity, but unlike all traditional resource elements, data is ubiquitous, and the more data is used, the greater the value. Cloud computing can efficiently mine and realize the value of data.
After data becomes a new factor of production, the production methods that used to consume resources at any cost will undergo fundamental changes, and all of us will face new opportunities and challenges in the data age.
The opportunities of the digital age are the opportunities for innovation that create inclusiveness. In the past 20 years, the infrastructure of the digital economy has been fully developed, and social efficiency has been greatly improved. Whoever you are, whether you've been successful in the past or not, in the age of the digital economy, whoever uses these three technologies better gets tickets for the next era.
Alibaba's start from scratch is not how successful we are in our business model, but we have used the Internet and cloud computing to carry out a business digital transformation, build a new business infrastructure, and precipitate a new business operating system. Countless new brands have risen in the Internet age because of the use of this new commercial operating system. Today we see the integration of online and offline, and the integration of consumer Internet and industrial Internet has become a trend.
The digital age has brought us new challenges. The challenge is not our abilities and resources, but our way of thinking and thinking. The Internet is not a channel, cloud computing is not a means, and data is not used to prove that our decisions are correct. The core of what we want to learn here today is to change our minds, how to think about problems and opportunities in the digital age, to reshape new production relations with digitalization, and to recognize how data has changed this era. Only then can we grasp the next era.
In today's changing world, the post-epidemic era has put forward higher requirements and expectations for the digital society. The change of production mode has brought about changes in lifestyle, China has a natural demographic advantage and institutional advantages, more importantly, in the past 20 years, the Chinese people have accepted the new digital life, and the change of thinking has created the changes of the times.
As entrepreneurs, in the new business academy, we must not only learn about the opportunities of the digital age, but also learn about the responsibilities of the digital age. The Party Central Committee has put forward the goal of carbon peaking, carbon neutrality and common prosperity, which is both a challenge and an opportunity.
Moving towards a digital society is a low-carbon society. Between 2010 and 2018, global computing increased by 500%, while demand for energy increased by only 6%. Every kilowatt-hour of electricity added to the calculation reduces the consumption of electricity by 10 degrees for the world. Data-driven production methods will effectively control the energy consumption of the whole society, and the low-carbon goal will be successfully achieved with the evolution of the digital society.
The digital age also contributes to the realization of common prosperity. In the past, people have imagined the great vision of common prosperity countless times, but there is no chance to truly realize it, and geographical differences are insurmountable gaps in both the agricultural and industrial eras. Until the digital age, human beings were finally able to use the power of the Internet to eliminate the limitations of geographical differences and enjoy the opportunities and services provided by digital platforms in a balanced manner.
Double carbon and common prosperity are not only responsibilities, but also strategic opportunities for enterprises if they are thought in the way of the digital age. Because they are the product of this era, but also the future of this era.
Folks, we see the tide of history rushing towards the digital age, a great change, full of opportunities and challenges. Tsinghua School of Economics and Management has been observing and grasping the pulse of the times, which is why we should work with Tsinghua School of Economics and Management to create a "new business school", I believe that with the experience of Tsinghua School of Economics and Management and the practice of Ali, you will be able to find the tickets of the new era here, let us meet the future together here, and jointly move towards the era of digital economy.