Zhou Yunjie, deputy to the National People's Congress: The industrial Internet is an effective path to prosper the digital economy

China's digital economy construction is entering a historic turning point.

On January 12, 2022, the State Council pointed out in the "14th Five-Year Plan" digital economy development plan issued that the development of the mainland's digital economy during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period should take the deep integration of digital technology and the real economy as the main line to empower the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries.

According to the plan, by 2025, the added value of the core industries of the mainland's digital economy will account for 10% of GDP.

This means that China's digital economy construction needs to accelerate the accumulation of quantitative changes from the traditional to a higher stage of qualitative change. The traditional simple technology stacking is obviously no longer able to meet the growing and escalating economic, industrial and life digital needs of the mainland, nor can it bring effective and local digital support to different cities in China and in different advantageous industries in the process of industrial transformation and upgrading.

The key "key" to realize the transformation from quantitative change to qualitative change is the construction of the industrial Internet and its ecology.

The two sessions of the National People's Congress in 2022 are being held, and Zhou Yunjie, deputy to the National People's Congress, chairman of the board of directors and CEO of Haier Group, once again stressed the importance of focusing on the development of the industrial Internet in his proposal. From cities to enterprises, from policy support, technology open source to benchmarking, Zhou Yunjie believes that the task left for China's industrial Internet construction is still arduous, and the time window for seizing global dominance is fleeting.

Competing for the "new engine" of breakthrough, transformation and upgrading

The digital economy has become one of the main tracks for countries and cities around the world to compete.

According to the Prospective Industry Research Institute, during the period of 2018-2020, the scale of the global digital economy continued to rise, and by 2020, the scale of the global digital economy has reached 32.61 trillion US dollars, a year-on-year nominal increase of 3.0%, accounting for 43.7% of GDP.

In recent years, the national level has also continuously emphasized that the digital economy is the future development direction of the world, and it is necessary to vigorously develop the digital economy, accelerate the promotion of digital industrialization and industrial digitization, and promote the deep integration of the digital economy and the real economy.

But the development of the digital economy is difficult to go hand in hand.

It is true that the rapid development of new infrastructure technologies has given Chinese cities a more and more complex vision of digital construction, but in fact, whether it is energy digitalization, public security digitalization, medical digitalization or consumption digitalization, the digitization of these segments is first and foremost inseparable from the digitalization of the economy.

This is the cornerstone of the city's digital economy. Only by doing a good job in economic digitalization, digital construction in a series of fields such as government governance and people's lives can we have all-dimensional support from resources, technology and ecology.

The construction of the industrial Internet has thus become a necessary way for China to accelerate the process of industrial digitalization and break through from the global digital competition.

As Zhou Yunjie said in his proposal: "The industrial Internet has become a 'new engine' for the development of the city's digital economy. ”

There are many pioneers in China's traditional industries, which have successfully used the empowerment of the industrial Internet to achieve transformation and upgrading to a more scientific, safe and efficient production model:

Shandong Deyou Electric is an excellent traditional manufacturing enterprise that has been deeply engaged in the power industry for nearly 20 years. All along, the health status monitoring of the main component parameters such as current and voltage of the distribution station is missing, the traditional point inspection mode, the large investment in manpower and material resources, the sudden equipment failure, the emergency repair affecting the power supply plan and many other problems have been plaguing the enterprise, making it difficult to achieve cost reduction and efficiency improvement and quality improvement of enterprise production.

With the surge of the new infrastructure wave, this traditional manufacturing company also has the opportunity to embrace the industrial Internet. In June 2020, Shandong Deyou established a strategic ecological cooperation with Haier's Kaos Industrial Internet Platform, which provides high-performance, highly reliable and highly flexible data center, infrastructure hardware and software resource services, and jointly builds a smart energy service platform.

With the help of the platform, Deyou's sales in the field of intelligent power distribution equipment in 2021 have reached 60 million, a three-fold increase over 2020, the product premium has increased by an average of 5%-7%, a number of unattended smart substations have been built, and the transformation from an engineering-type enterprise to a product-based and scenario-based enterprise has begun to further broaden the development space of the enterprise.

It can be seen that the vigorous development of the industrial Internet has brought new opportunities for the transformation and upgrading of these traditional enterprises; the arrival of the industrial Internet has provided an important driving force for the acceleration of China's industrial digitalization.

However, at present, in the traditional manufacturing system with a huge volume in the mainland, there are still many traditional enterprises that urgently need to absorb the power of the industrial Internet and achieve digital transformation and upgrading.

This means that for enterprises, there is still a huge gap in the investment in the construction of the industrial Internet at the government level.

Therefore, Zhou Yunjie also mentioned in the proposal that we should further strengthen policy guidance for the construction of the industrial Internet and increase financial support:

"Encourage qualified cities to provide enterprises with the whole life cycle service of 'one-click online full coverage', provide the government with a digital industry map covering industries and regions, and comprehensively improve the forward-looking, scientific, accurate and comprehensive decision-making."

A "new exploration" of first-mover and sharing experiences

Another "boulder" hindering the process of China's urban digital economy is the development of Different Advantageous Industries and Their Different Degrees of Development in Chinese Cities.

China is a vast country, and different cities have gradually accumulated their own unique advantages in the course of decades-long development.

Whether it is Shanghai's automobile industry, Hangzhou's Internet industry, Shenzhen's optoelectronic industry or Nanjing's pharmaceutical industry, these cities and their industries have distinct regional characteristics and industrial characteristics in terms of development base, production capacity model, and industrial chain structure, which are difficult to be easily copied or imitated, and also constitute the unique competitiveness of each city.

However, in the era of digital economy, the differentiation of the development of these cities also makes it impossible for them to apply the same industrial Internet practice path, and the same set of templates will not be able to meet the complex digital economy development needs of Chinese cities.

In response to this problem, Zhou Yunjie expressed his views in the proposal:

"Support the national key provinces and cities to try first, top-level overall planning, build the industrial base of the 'digital economy' with the industrial Internet, and take the industrial Internet as the main context of the regional economic transformation and upgrading in series."

In fact, in this regard, Shandong Qingdao has taken the lead in carrying out more successful practices.

In April 2021, Qingdao officially released the special action plan of "Qingdao for work".

The plan clearly defines the implementation of the industrial Internet enterprise comprehensive service platform construction plan, the industry-specific field industrial Internet platform construction plan, the industrial Internet demonstration park construction plan and other three major plans, divided into 12 tasks, 40 projects, to build the "digital Qingdao" industrial base.

After nearly a year of layout polishing, the Qingdao Industrial Internet Enterprise Comprehensive Service Platform has opened up 24 commissions and bureaus, docking 946 public services, 281 enabling services, 15655 enabling applications, and creating 26 vertical platforms for the industrial chain.

What is more noteworthy is that "Gongfu Qingdao", as a very universal experience in the development of the industrial Internet, has been verified in more urban practices across the country.

Based on the practical experience of "Industrial Empowerment Qingdao", the "Industrial Empowerment Power" 1+N+X model, with the industrial Internet as the "new engine" of the urban digital economy transformation, and "1 industrial Internet enterprise comprehensive service platform, N industry-specific field industrial Internet platforms, and X industrial Internet demonstration parks" as the architecture, has been successfully copied in Deyang, Sichuan and Wuhu, Anhui.

Obviously, this "first-and-first-served" is effective. The successful experience accumulated by Qingdao's first trial has brought a new model of urban development that "Qingdao can make breakthroughs, Shandong can promote, and the whole country can learn from"; and this model is expected to bring an important boost to the rapid layout of the industrial Internet and accelerate the construction of the digital economy for more Chinese cities in the future.

City-enterprises work together to seize the "new advantage" of dominance

In view of the development of China's industrial Internet, this has been the 6th consecutive year that Zhou Yunjie has submitted relevant suggestions at the two sessions of the National People's Congress.

From the initial proposal to build the industrial Internet, to the later focus on the construction of ecology, data security management, new technology integration and innovation and the creation of an industrial Internet system with Chinese characteristics, this year he not only re-emphasized the importance of increasing investment in the construction of the industrial Internet in the proposal, but also gave more detailed implementation opinions on how to accelerate the construction of China's industrial Internet from the perspective of his understanding.

From the perspective of the world environment, although today we still cannot deny the first-hand advantages of European and American countries in the digital economy, in the face of increasingly fierce technological and industrial competition in the international market, we have reason to believe that the industrial Internet has become a "heavy weapon" for China's urban digital empowerment and breakthrough from the high-pressure competitive environment.

This is a journey that requires cities and enterprises, enterprises and enterprises to work together; to this day, there are still some excellent Chinese cities and enterprises that are already working hard in different ways.

When looking at northern China, which has a glorious manufacturing history, the current overall manufacturing industry is at a critical moment of transformation and upgrading. Cities are well aware that the transformation and growth of the manufacturing industry will inevitably need to truly open up the circulation channels between industries and become an industrial hub for the optimization and upgrading of the regional industrial chain, and it is precisely in this way that the industrial Internet has become the focus of attention. For Shandong, as the only province in the country with all 41 industrial categories, the industrial Internet is the key support for realizing the digitalization, networking and intelligence of the manufacturing industry.

At present, Shandong has cultivated 115 provincial-level industrial Internet platforms. Taking Kaos as an example, he led 20 projects, including undertaking the construction of an integrated service platform for industrial Internet enterprises in Qingdao, and led the construction of industrial Internet platforms in 4 specific industries such as high-end home appliances, biomedical, smart logistics, and smart home in 3 industrial Internet demonstration parks in Sino-German high-end home appliances, Dongjiakou Chemical Industry, high-tech zone "artificial intelligence + high-end equipment", and high-end home appliances, biomedical, smart logistics, and smart homes.

The changes brought by the industrial Internet to Qingdao manufacturing are extending to thousands of industries, which undoubtedly highlights the role of benchmarking for the whole country, and the "1+N+X" model proposed by "Industrial Empowerment" is also mainly based on the BaaS engine of the Kaos Industrial Internet Platform, and extracts a new paradigm of urban digital transformation that is very universal.

However, for Chinese cities and Chinese enterprises that are riding the waves in the era of digital economy, the road to the construction of the industrial Internet still has a long way to go.

At this year's National Two Sessions, Zhou Yunjie also submitted another proposal on the industrial Internet - promoting open source to form a new advantage of the mainland industrial Internet. He astutely and directly proposed: "The timing of dominance in the global open source landscape is fleeting, and this window of time is also something we must seize." ”

This sense of urgency and aggressiveness may be common to forward-lookers. Zhou Yunjie believes that open and open source has the characteristics of mass collaboration, open sharing, and continuous innovation, which can help the mainland to "overtake in the corner" of key technologies of the industrial Internet. His suggestions point directly to the openness and win-win of China's leading industrial Internet platform: to build a top open source community of China's industrial Internet with 15 double-cross platforms as the core members, to cultivate high-quality industrial Internet open source projects such as CAX and PLC, and to promote the cultivation of open source talents.

From Zhou Yunjie's suggestion, it is not difficult to see that if China wants to develop the industrial Internet, it is impossible to fully emulate the Western model, let alone rely on Western enterprises to promote it. Only when Chinese enterprises co-create synergy and explore their own models can they hope to find China's competitive advantage in the era of digital economy.