Sign in Get started

MING Labs
MING Labs is a
leading digital
business builder
located in Berlin,
Munich, New York
City, Shanghai…

Follow

Photo by Adi Constantin on Unsplash

Never miss a story from MING Labs, when you sign up for
GET UPDATES
Medium. Learn more

Inside China: Insights, Plans And

Lessons From Smart City
What is the status of Smart City 2.0 in a country at the forefront
of digitalization?
MING Labs Follow
Apr 18 · 10 min read

by Fang Dong, Senior Community Manager, and Randall Wong, Marketing

Intern, at MING Labs

. . .

Picking Up From Where We Left O

When we met EnBW, they told us of their plans to explore new business
elds and Smart City was one of the areas that caught their attention. They
would like to look to other countries that have done well in the area of Smart
City development and had Asia in their consideration. Being in Asia for
several years now, MING’s community consisted of numerous Smart City-
related companies, and we decided to organize a Smart City tour for the
executives of EnBW. Four tours had been completed in Singapore, Shanghai,
Japan and Korea. In our rst series, we looked at what went on during the
Singapore tour. From Singapore, we learnt the importance of having the
government as a contributor and player for the drive of Smart Cities.
Singapore’s government does so by investing heavily and opening up access to
data for companies to utilize.

China, China, China

In this second series, we turn our attention to China. A country known for a
lot of red tape and strict government regulations, China is actually at the
forefront of developing Smart City innovation. Up until 2016, China had
542 cities under Smart City development and that number is expected to only
increase (China Academy of Information and Communication Technology,
2018) with rising government investment into this industry. It is stated that
the annual amount of investment into Smart City projects will rise from 375.2
billion CNY (approximately USD 55 billion) in 2017 to 1.23 trillion CNY
(approximately USD 181.7 billion) in 2021.

Similar to Singapore, China only placed greater emphasis on Smart City

projects and movement in recent years. However, the country has undergone
a rapid transformation over the years and has already entered phase 2.0 in
just ve years. In Smart City 1.0, the focus was on infrastructure, the
implementation of technology and data collection. There was an introduction
of RFID (radio frequency identi cation) throughout the nation and QR
codes could be found at every shop, on every street of the country. The
government also set up infrastructure that would support seamless wireless
connection throughout the island. Simultaneously, there was a boom in the
usage of smartphones — 690 million in 2019 compared to 430 million in
2013 — and all these were important contributors to the whole Smart City
drive.

Now in their current phase — Smart City 2.0 — there is a

shift of emphasis towards greater digitalization and
having more user-focused solutions.

The boom in smartphone usage in China brought along an in ux of data

generated from its users. With the presence of smartphones, contribution to
the drive of Smart City is no longer restricted just to corporations. Citizens can
now also play a part and contribute to the drive of Smart City by innovating
better solutions and creating apps that bene t society. With the citizens now
involved in the drive for Smart City, solutions are expected to be developed
even quicker. The key ingredients usually needed for reliable and useful
Smart City solutions are usable data and contribution from di erent
stakeholders. China has shown us just that and for the rest of the article, we
will explore how China is doing it.

Photo by Denys Nevozhai on Unsplash

Good Data, Bad Data And Usable Data

It is common knowledge that China has a wealth of data. When EnBW met
with the di erent companies, they realized that in comparison to Germany,
there are not many restrictions to data access in China. But one particular
meeting changed everybody’s prior perception of data access in China. Tezign
is a technology startup that serves as a platform to connect creative talents
with clients through the use of large data and intelligent matching
technology. Their business relies heavily on data to match clients to design
agencies based on their budget and marketing requirements. Hence, they
have to crunch a large amount of personal pro le data and analyze this data
on a daily basis. Companies in China like Tezign may not be concerned about
data restrictions, however, they are struggling with receiving data of
minimum quality.

When it comes to data, there is good data and bad data. Good data is usually
reliable, accurate and can still be used after a certain period of time. Bad data,
on the other hand, refers to data that has been maliciously tampered with or
has not yet been veri ed (Accenture, 2018). The impact of having fake data
around is detrimental, especially for companies utilizing technology such as
AI and Machine Learning. These technologies require large amounts of data
fed into them to learn. Hence, when fake data is fed into AI, what follows is a
technology that does not serve its intended purpose. Microsoft’s AI-powered
chatbot, Tay, is a classic example of just that, as it eventually started giving
racist comments online when its creators trained it with Twitter comments.

Fake data is usually provided by companies or organizations to make them

look larger in size than they actually are. In 2018, news about regions in
China submitting fake data surfaced. Inner Mongolia admitted to falsifying
data that in uenced the growth of their GDP in 2016. The region in ated
their actual earnings by 40% and the revised gures for Inner Mongolia
showed that its economy in 2016 shrank 13% from the previous year.

Even though China has a large amount of data available

for use, not all of that data is reliable and usable for
companies.

The quality of data is especially important for companies innovating Smart

City solutions since the success and e ectiveness of these solutions are heavily
dependent on data. Hence, companies are usually concerned about the
minimum quality of data. Good, usable data would help companies feed
accurate information into their technology, analyze and gain accurate
insights, and eventually have precise Smart City solutions.

Maximizing The Potential Of Di erent Stakeholders

Over the years, China has worked hard to build a supportive environment
for the development of Smart Cities via a top-down approach. In China’s
current ecosystem for Smart City solutions, the government is leading the
pack, while businesses and citizens have been encouraged to join in this
movement and to contribute in their various capacity. Among the businesses,
there are startups with very niche expertise and specialized skillsets
contributing to the creation of new technology. And there are bigger
corporations with the resources and capital to initiate large-scale projects,
new research and development, and scaling products to a higher quality.

What is unique about China is the close collaboration and synergy between
all these stakeholders, with data ow and access being in the center of it all.

Having a discussion with Dr Fan Ling, CEO of Tezign, about Tezign’s involvement in China’s Smart City projects

Startups’ Contribution
“A startup is a company working to solve a problem where the solution is not
obvious and success is not guaranteed.” — Neil Blumenthal, Co-Founder and Co-
CEO of Warby Parker

Startups are important in a country’s drive for Smart City. Startups are
typically de ned by their lean teams and their heavy focus on a niche area,
usually related to the problems they are solving. Having a lean team, startups
usually have agile processes, and this helps to get things done e ciently.
Furthermore, being subject-matter experts of their eld would help save time
in projects since corporations are usually just experts in one or two elds.
Having di erent experts would increase the variety and creativity of
solutions, hence increasing the overall quality of innovation.

In China, startups like Tezign and Readsense have been contributing to the
overall Smart City e ort through ways such as being involved in projects —
Tezign’s contribution to the City Brain project — or even through the
products they create. Readsense is a Chinese AI company that focuses on deep
learning and embedded vision solutions. Their facial recognition technology
is embedded into doors for smart homes and in shopping malls to track
customer behaviors. When startups o er their specialized skillsets to the
overall drive for Smart City, it speeds up progress and maximizes
e ciency.

Larger Corporations’ Involvement

When the drive for Smart City relies only on startups, there will be a lack of
scalability. As startups are small in nature and may not have the resources to
scale new innovations and products, it is necessary for the larger businesses
to step in and contribute, especially for a huge market like China. Therefore,
large corporations such as Alibaba and Wanxiang Group have been
contributing to the overall drive for Smart City. The City Brain project in
Hangzhou mentioned earlier was initiated by Alibaba while Wanxiang Group
embarked on a project called the InnovaCity. The City Brain project utilizes
tra c surveillance systems and sensors to optimize routes, hence reducing
tra c jams in the city. Previously, it would take approximately 40 minutes to
travel 3 kilometers on the roads of Hangzhou during rush hour periods.
However, the project has reduced traveling time on highways during the rush
hour period by 4.6 minutes. Hangzhou has also improved its ranking from 5th
to 57th in the list of ‘most congested city’ in China.

The InnovaCity project, on the other hand, will see homes, research facilities
and eco-friendly smart manufacturing factories, all built on a mere ten
hectares of land space. Although the project is still in its construction phase, it
was impressive to see how far they have come in just two years. With the
number of resources large corporations have, they can invest and commit
assets into these projects. China’s unique ecosystem of stakeholders has
allowed the country to move quickly in their pursuit of Smart Cities.

The Importance Of Citizens As A Stakeholder

“Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because,
and only when, they are created by everybody.” — Jane Jacobs, urbanist and
activist, 1961

Support cannot just come from the government and businesses since the main
consumers of these solutions are the citizens. Solutions must address the
needs of users, but at the same time, users must be receptive and accepting
of the direction the country is moving into. Without this mutual contribution,
solutions will not be maximized, and investments would just go to waste. The
Chinese government recognized the need to involve citizens in their Smart
City movement. In 2014, the National Development and Reform Commission
(NDRC) issued “The Guidance on Promoting Healthy Smart City
Development” with other government ministries and agencies. According to
a report by UNDP, it serves as an action plan to guide and coordinate
di erent government stakeholders in developing Smart Cities in China.
Since then, the government has been introducing new initiatives to promote
participation from the citizens. One such example is the introduction of
microblog Weibo and mobile instant message platform WeChat for online
discussion and to encourage more collective action o ine. In 2007, these
online platforms were used to gather 10,000 citizens for an “anti-PX leisure
walk” in protest against the building of a PX chemical plant near residential
areas in Xiamen. As a result, the Xiamen Municipal Government backed down
from the initial plans of building the chemical plant at the intended location.

By creating platforms to encourage public participation, citizens would be

empowered to play a greater role in contributing to the overall Smart City
movement. Although the contribution from the citizens in China is currently
done through the participation of government initiatives, the government is
taking the right rst steps in encouraging more bottom-up solutions from
their people. Eventually, the state of Smart City would turn into one that is for
the people, created by the people.

Group picture with Fang Dong, MING Labs’ Senior Community Manager, Dr Fan Ling and Executives of EnBW’s Critical Infrastructure department

What We Learnt From China

China and Germany have their strengths in di erent areas. China is strong in
delivering products quickly and e ciently getting to an operational stage,
whereas Germany has a legacy in precision and producing quality products.
From our trip to China, we learnt the importance of data access and ow in
Smart City solutions. Beyond just data access and ow, it is also important for
data to have a minimum quality in order for e ective solutions to be
produced. Also, we saw how the di erent contributors should not work in
silos but come together for more e ective solutions to emerge. With
greater access to data and the ease of data ow, it will help companies
innovate solutions e ectively and to maximise their solutions. The
Chinese government also saw the need to set up proper infrastructure and
have regulations in place to make Smart City solutions happen. In addition, it
is important for the West to understand the value of di erent technology and
see the huge bene t to the lives of citizens when technology is used
e ectively.

China was by far the most technologically advanced country we’ve visited in
Asia and it is an exciting place to experience the Smart City movement.

. . .

Fang Dong is Senior Community Manager and Randall Wong is Marketing Intern
at MING Labs.

MING Labs is a leading digital business builder located in Berlin, Munich, New
York City, Shanghai and Singapore. We guide clients in designing their businesses
for the future, ensuring they are leaders in the eld of innovation.

Liked this story, and curious to know more? Start a conversation with us on
Twitter, check our latest updates on LinkedIn, or drop us a note at
[email protected].

. . .

Related Reading: A Smart City Innovation Tour In Asia: China, Singapore,

Japan & South Korea

What is the status of Asian metropolises in the context of Smart Cities? We explored the Smart Nation
Singapore to nd out more

Join our Digital Leadership Community

Get stories like this sent to your inbox once a month. Get inspiration and hear
insights from best-in-class digital business innovators.

Email

Sign up

I consent to receive emails from MING Labs. I understand that I can

unsubscribe whenever I want.

I agree to leave Medium.com and submit this information, which will be

collected and used according to Upscribe's privacy policy.

 formed on Upscribe

Smart Cities China Innovation Digitalization Data

9 claps

MING Labs Follow MING Labs Follow

Medium member since MING Labs is a leading
May 2017 digital business builder
We are a leading digital located in Berlin, Munich,
business builder located New York City, Shanghai
in Munich, Berlin, and Singapore. We guide
Shanghai, Singapore, and clients in designing their
New York City. businesses for the future,
ensuring they are leaders
in the eld of innovation.

Related reads Related reads Related reads

Designing in the Void The reality of Service Design within Provotypes: how making annoying
a large bank things can help you design better

IDEO Ross Breadmore Anna Haverinen

971 457 615
Sep 6, 2017 · 8 min rea Jun 1, 2018 · 4 min rea Aug 8, 2018 · 6 min rea

Responses

Write a response…