The Chinese government has unveiled plans to build a massive technology park through which the country’s leaders probably want to see the development of world-leading robotics and artificial intelligence technologies of the future.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping is demanding that scientists and other boffins in the world’s most populous nation achieve a “major breakthrough” in AI technology by 2025.
Jinping says he dreams of China becoming a global leader in advanced technologies and has ordered his politburo to prioritise computing and the industrial sector.
The state-backed news agency Xinhua reports that Jinping has demanded the construction of a $2.1 billion technology park on the outskirts of the capital, Beijing.
The park will cover an area of 55 hectares and the football-playing Jinping probably wants it to be completed within five years.
The industrial park is expected to attract approximately 400 enterprises, says Xinhua, and some of the technologies they will be developing include:
- “super high-speed” big data;
- cloud computing;
- biometric identification;
- deep learning;
- fifth-generation mobile telecommunications networks;
- supercomputing; and
- robotics and automation.
Xinhua claims the annual output of the park is likely to be around $7.7 billion.
The developer of the park, Zhongguancun Development Group, will partner with Chinese and overseas universities, research institutes and large, private-sector companies from China and abroad.
China is hell-bent on not only catching up with advanced technological nations in the West, it is also looking to overtake them in some key areas.
One of the most important areas for China, given that it’s said to be the largest manufacturing nation in the world, is the industrial sector.
Here, the government has launched a series of initiatives under its “Made in China” programme, which aims to “transform China from a manufacturing giant into a world manufacturing power”, according to Xinhua.
The areas the government has prioritised are:
- information technology;
- numerical control tools and robotics;
- aerospace equipment;
- ocean engineering equipment and high-tech ships;
- railway equipment;
- energy saving and new energy vehicles;
- power equipment;
- new materials;
- medicine and medical devices; and
- agricultural machinery.
Within those sectors, the government called for such things as greater effort to promote Chinese brands; the integration of more technology into manufacturing; more internationalised operations; and more environmentally-friendly manufacturing processes.
