General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out during his visit to Zhejiang in 2020 that making cities smarter and wiser is the only way to promote the modernization of urban governance system and capacity, and has a bright future. The 14th Five-Year Plan for Digital Economy Development proposes to deepen the construction of new smart cities, promote the integration and sharing of urban data and business collaboration, and enhance the capacity of comprehensive urban management services. In this issue, relevant experts are invited to discuss the construction of smart cities.

Moderator: Xu Xiangmei, Researcher and Director of Theory Department of Economic Daily

        Wisdom city construction continues to deepen

        Moderator: What results have been achieved in exploring the construction of smart cities in China?

        Shan Zhiguang (Director of Information Technology and Industrial Development Department of National Information Center): Since its introduction, the concept of smart city has caused widespread influence in the international arena and continued to trigger the global smart city development boom. Smart cities have become a necessary and strategic choice to promote urbanization, crack the big city disease, improve the level of urban governance, improve the quality of public services, develop the digital economy and enhance the sustainable development of cities.

        At present, there is no standard definition of smart city at home and abroad. My personal expression of the concept of smart city is that a smart city is a reform and innovation system project carried out under the conditions of modern information society, making full use of modern science and technology, oriented to the actual needs of urban economic and social development, with the core of enhancing people's happiness and satisfaction, and for improving the wisdom of urban development.

        China's wisdom city from the perspective of policy promotion has broadly experienced four stages.

        The first stage is the exploration and development period. From the end of 2008, IBM proposed the concept of "smart earth" to August 2014, the concept of smart city derived from this quickly recognized and developed around the world, triggering a boom in the construction of smart cities, and various places in China began to explore the construction of smart cities according to their own understanding, but this stage of exploration is still relatively scattered and disorderly. The second stage is the standardization and coordination period. From August 2014 to December 2015, eight ministries and commissions, including the National Development and Reform Commission, issued the Guiding Opinions on Promoting the Healthy Development of Smart Cities, which was the first systematic document approved by the State Council to comprehensively guide the construction of smart cities in China. At the national level, an "Inter-ministerial Coordination Working Group for Promoting the Healthy Development of Smart Cities" led by the National Development and Reform Commission and composed of 25 ministries was established, and various departments began to collaborate to guide the construction of local smart cities. The third phase is the strategic enhancement period. From December 2015 to December 2017, the main symbol is that the Central Urban Work Conference was held in 2015, and smart cities were elevated to the level of national strategy and became an important grip of national new urbanization, after which the concept of new smart cities was proposed. The fourth stage is the period of deepening development. From the 19th Party Congress to the present, with the wisdom society as the leader, the construction of new smart cities around the world has accelerated to the ground, and the construction results have been gradually extended to the counties and rural areas.

        In recent years, China's new smart city construction continues to deepen, the quality of urban services, governance levels and operational efficiency significantly improved, the people's sense of access, happiness and security continue to enhance. The effectiveness of the new smart city construction is mainly reflected in the following aspects.

        City services from the best efforts to the change to the uncompromising. The "Internet + government services" allows enterprises and the masses to go to the government to do things as convenient as "online shopping". On the one hand, the service mode is changed from decentralized service to collaborative service, changing "the masses run back and forth" to "departmental collaboration", changing "passive service" to "active service", and realizing the "active service". "active service", to achieve government services "only one door", off-site and near to do. On the other hand, the service channel from online to fingertip for the change. China's 31 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities) and Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps and more than 40 State Council departments and agencies have opened online government services platform, the initial completion of the national integrated online government services platform system. More and more matters can be reached through small programs, APP, self-service terminals and other channels "fingertip", the masses brush their faces, move their fingers, you can enjoy the convenient experience of doing, at any time, anywhere.

        Governance model from one-way management to two-way interaction change. From "rely on the masses, the combination of special groups" of the "snow bright project", to "joint prevention and control, group prevention and control" of the community grid management, from "everyone participation, conscious maintenance" of digital city management, to "mass supervision, everyone is responsible" of ecological environment improvement, new smart city in solving urban governance problems at the same time, promote urban governance model from simple government supervision to more focus on social cooperative governance change. First, the means of two-way interaction between the government and the people are more diversified. In addition to traditional hotlines, portals and other channels, 297 prefecture-level administrative governments in China have opened new media communication channels for the public, such as WeChat, Weibo and mobile APP, with an overall coverage rate of 88.9%. Second, the scope of physical integration of information has become more extensive. By building a digital twin city, it realizes digital perception of urban infrastructure, visual display of operation status and intelligent simulation of development trends, and promotes scientific government decision-making. Third, the effectiveness of collaborative social governance is more obvious. A number of innovative applications such as city management "Handy Shot", traffic management APP "illegal report", community grid management, etc. have effectively improved the capability and refinement of urban governance.

        Data resources from the main line to the combination of the block change. Around the elimination of the "data chimney", China has been promoting cross-level and cross-sectoral government data sharing by grasping the coordination, coming up with methods, building platforms, laying the foundation and promoting applications. It has basically established a directory system for government information resources, and realized dynamic updating and online management of the directory for sharing government information resources based on the national data sharing and exchange platform. Relying on the e-government extranet, the national government information sharing website is online and running to create a national integrated data sharing and exchange platform system.

        Digital technology changes from single application to integrated integration. The pace of cross-fertilization and innovative application of digital technology has accelerated, and the technical path of the new smart city has become more diversified and optimized. With the continuous deployment of BeiDou navigation satellites and the improvement of drone technology, some cities have explored the use of new mobile terminals such as drones for urban governance, realizing the goal of "seeing from the sky, patrolling on the ground and checking online". The combination of artificial intelligence and big data has created a new experience of convenient life. Hangzhou and Quzhou in Zhejiang introduced AI robots to help "the most run once" business, and the satisfaction rate of the people doing business is as high as 94.7%.

        The construction and management mode has changed from government-led to diversified cooperation. Some cities explore the introduction of PPP model to promote the construction and operation of smart cities, the realization of operational projects and public welfare projects bundled development, while reducing the financial pressure on the government, effectively alleviate the lack of participation of social capital parties to non-operational projects and other issues.

        Internet of things to provide important support

        Moderator: What is the role of the Internet of Things in the construction of smart cities? What are the issues to focus on in promoting the development of IoT smart infrastructure?

        Zhu Decheng (Deputy Director of the Strategy Committee of China Electronics Technology Group Corporation): Internet of Things is the main means of perception technology and network communication technology, to achieve the ubiquitous connection of people, machines and things, providing information perception, information transmission, information processing and other services infrastructure. Wisdom means the ability to respond adaptively to the environment. To make a city smart is to equip it with the ability to respond to various changes. This makes the Internet of Things have a wide application space in the smart city. Sensors, as the front-end of IoT, are the prerequisite for intelligent perception of the urban environment. The extensive connection and data sharing of these sensors make our ability to perceive the environment more comprehensive, accurate and intelligent. Smart grid, smart logistics, smart community, smart transportation, etc., all have IoT applications.

        The concept of IoT was first proposed by the United States, and after IBM launched the "Smart Planet" concept in 2008, it received wide attention and strong support, and major countries around the world have accelerated the layout of the development of IoT industry. According to the latest research report by IoT Analytics, the number of global IoT connections will grow 8% year-on-year to 12.2 billion active endpoints in 2021; in 2022, the IoT market is expected to grow 18% to reach 14.4 billion active connections. Approximately 27 billion connected IoT devices are expected in 2025 as supply constraints ease and growth accelerates further.

        IoT provides important support for smart cities to achieve "interconnection of everything, intelligent perception and scientific decision-making", and has become a fundamental element in the architecture of smart cities.

        From a global perspective, China's early layout of the Internet of Things industry. 1999 to start the research and development of sensor networks, in 2011 was written into the national "Twelfth Five-Year Plan", formally rose to the national strategic level. In 2021, the number of authorized spectrum cellular IoT connections in China has reached 1.52 billion, and according to the national planning target, by the end of 2023, major cities in China should initially build a new IoT infrastructure, and the number of IoT connections will exceed 2 billion. According to the world's leading market research firm IDC predicts that in 2025, China's IoT market size will exceed $300 billion, accounting for about 26.1% of the global share.

        To promote the healthy and orderly development of the Internet of Things, deep excavation of the value of the Internet of Things, to meet the real needs of smart cities, the need to pay special attention to the following points.

        First, more emphasis on open sharing. IoT infrastructure should not only be integrated from the functional layer, but also from the basic layer, through the use of open architecture, to promote the "Internet of everything" to "the number of everything", "everything wisdom "evolution, to achieve the right time to send valuable data to a useful place, to lay a solid "city network" foundation.

        Second, pay more attention to intensive construction. Adhere to the concept of green and safe development, in accordance with the scale, synergy, diversification, to solve the traditional "chimney" construction brought about by high costs, connectivity difficulties, fragmentation and other problems. Through intensive construction and intensive management, strengthen the common use, integration of common, open application, based on the construction of application systems in various industries, integration of government, industry resources, accelerate the process of urban digitalization.

        Third, more prominent scenario-driven. Internet of things infrastructure construction is a long-term evolutionary process, to strengthen the application system construction traction, according to local, timely, continuous evolution, system construction, promote the traditional infrastructure intelligence and new infrastructure construction organic integration, through the application of scenario-driven to improve the level of intelligence, to effectively solve the problems encountered in social development, and powerfully support the development of urban wisdom.

        Fourth, pay more attention to safety and reliability. With the increase in digitalization, the number of connections, more open data, more intelligent services, security issues will become increasingly prominent. Internet of things as an emerging technology industry, its sense, transmission, knowledge, with various aspects, in addition to the need to face the traditional network security, but also face many new security challenges, from the terminal, network, platform, application of multi-level integrated consideration, technology, standards, solutions, in-depth study of many aspects to ensure that the city is safe and stable operation.

Exploring Digital Empowerment for Urban Governance