The Service Trade Fair is just a mirror. From face-scanning recruitment machines for the blue-collar market to life service data monitoring platforms for government and enterprises, they all reflect that China's digital services have penetrated into every aspect of personal life and business management.
Author|Sihang
Produced | Industrialist
After the summer heat has passed, Beijing still retains some residual warmth from summer. From September 2 to 6, the National Convention Center and Shougang Park were each busy in their own way. This year's Service Trade Fair (hereinafter referred to as the "Service Trade Fair") will be held at the National Convention Center and Shougang Park in the form of "one conference and two locations" like previous years.
In the venue with a total scale of 155,000 square meters, it covers national exhibitors to regional exhibitors, from intelligent hardware to digital solutions, from drone food delivery to robot dogs, and other digital achievements are displayed at the National Convention Center . Another venue, Shougang Park, also presented nine major thematic exhibitions including telecommunications, computer and information services, financial services, cultural tourism services and educational services.
The outside world can feel the excitement of the Service Trade Fair from a set of data: the five-day conference has more than 2,400 exhibitors, including more than 500 of the world's top 500 companies and industry leading companies.
In such a grand exhibition, exhibitors from all over the world gather together. Some of the tourists who come here are companies looking for solutions that apply to themselves; the other part are pure tourists who want to experience the most advanced hard technology and get a glimpse of China's digitalization process.
From facial recognition recruitment machines targeting the blue-collar market to life service data monitoring platforms displayed to governments and enterprises, they all demonstrate to tourists that domestic digital services have penetrated into every aspect of personal life and business management. For example, Huawei uses the Pangu meteorological model to predict extreme weather; Meituan uses the life service industry data operation platform to present a complete picture of the life service industry in different cities.
1. A new digital narrative that spans the world
Not far from the entrance of the National Convention Center, you can already feel a bit of exotic style. These unfamiliar faces may be exhibitors, service staff, or tourists. Entering the venue, the international atmosphere was even more intense. From Arab countries to European and American countries, the "circle of friends" of overseas exhibitors continued to expand. Even Paddington Bear from the UK came to liven up the atmosphere of the Service Trade Fair, attracting crowds of spectators.
Entering the E4 exhibition hall of the National Convention Center, the first thing that catches the eye is the facial recognition payment machine launched by Alipay in August this year. Industrialists learned from on-site personnel that this machine is launched for the labor-intensive blue-collar market and is very friendly to some blue-collar workers who are unfamiliar with information technology. Applicants do not need to fill in a resume, they only need to scan their face to complete the registration. This is a solution jointly launched by No. 1 Workplace and Alipay.
"At present, this machine has been promoted to Hangzhou West Railway Station and Jinhua, Zhejiang. Its main application scenarios include labor dispatch markets and local employment centers. The current purchase price of the enterprise is 3999, which is the price of the hardware machine; wait until the second year There is a software service fee of 2,000 yuan." The staff at workplace No. 1 introduced it to the industrialist.
Face recognition job search machine jointly launched by No. 1 Workplace and Alipay
In addition, in Alipay's exhibition hall, in addition to this job search machine, Alipay's layout and achievements in the digitalization of the service industry are also displayed. Alipay's digital platform has empowered seven major life service scenarios, including transportation, cultural tourism attractions, and digital retail, from product technical capabilities to digital operation capabilities to the platform's "atomic capabilities." Currently, Alipay has increased its product transaction volume by 49.2% by co-building industry solutions with 12,000 service providers.
Digital achievements of Alipay service industry
Companies that also showcased their urban digitalization achievements include Meituan and JD.com. The card played by Meituan is the Meituan Government and Enterprise Communication·Life Service Industry Data Operation Platform. Local governments can see the data collected by Meituan on it, but they “just ignore it”; the card played by JD Cloud is smart city operations. system that can detect data from public systems.
Meituan Government and Enterprise Communication
JD Cloud Smart City Operating System
In addition, JD Cloud has also launched a smart office platform for government office scenarios. For example, the comprehensive office platform "Beijing Office" launched for Beijing.
Beijing Comprehensive Office Platform 2.0 "Beijing Office"
At the Service Trade Fair, in order to help small and medium-sized enterprises go overseas with high quality, Alibaba International Station unveiled a new card - full-link foreign trade AI products. Through this product, small, medium and micro enterprises can quickly complete processes such as product selection, procurement, sales, logistics, customs declaration, payment collection, foreign exchange settlement and tax refund. In the past, this was a complex business that only large companies could handle.
Alibaba International Station’s full-link foreign trade AI products
At this CIFTIS, Guizhou, the “birthplace of the big data industry”, is a particularly eye-catching presence. As one of the two guest provinces at the 2023 Service Trade Fair, Guizhou focused on four themes: digital trade, tourism and health care, national culture, and engineering construction, focusing on demonstrating new technologies and applications in information technology services, artificial intelligence, cloud services, etc. Scenes.
Among them, more than 20 companies including Huawei Cloud, Guizhou Baishan Cloud Technology, Yunshang Guizhou, Manbang Logistics, and E-Commerce Cloud were present.
The model of Pingtang Bridge in the Guizhou Provincial Exhibition Hall
Huawei Cloud and Guiyang Guian join hands
In terms of digital services, Internet companies such as JD.com, Meituan, and Alibaba are all vying to flex their muscles. Behind digital services, another link that plays a key role is logistics.
At the venue, you can see that both China Logistics and Cainiao Logistics demonstrated their supply chain layout and solutions for various industries. Take Cainiao Logistics as an example. Cainiao is accelerating the construction of a world-leading smart logistics network. Through continuous investment in construction, Cainiao has established end-to-end logistics network capabilities relying on international hubs, trunk lines, terminals, and customs services. In addition, Cainiao's express delivery service not only covers domestic towns and villages, but also builds dedicated logistics lines overseas, such as Cainiao's UK dedicated line.
Cainiao Logistics Business Layout
2. After the Metaverse, large models become the protagonists
"I have been working in Shougang for 35 years, and I have a very deep affection for this place. Because my previous job was related to automation, I am very concerned about cutting-edge technology products. I just went to experience VR and the Metaverse, and walked around Dunhuang and Gulangyu Island . Technology has advanced too much." A retiree who once worked in Shougang Park told the industrialist when visiting the exhibition area.
The biggest difference between Shougang Park and the National Convention Center lies not in the number of exhibition halls or in the theme, but in the different groups of tourists. Shougang Park has gathered more workers of the older generation who have worked here, and they all have deep feelings for this place. Every year, these people come to Shougang Park to experience the changes in technology.
In addition to the Metaverse and VR exhibitions, this year’s Shougang Park has something new – large models.
First of all, in the exhibition hall of Mobvoi, the most eye-catching one is the AIGC art exhibition, which not only has generative photos, but also dialogue videos generated by AIGC. Walking further inside, you can see Mobvoi's large model product - Serial Monkey. At the scene, the staff demonstrated to the audience the intelligent Q&A of the enterprise CoPilot and the AI writing capabilities of Qiweiwen.
Go out and ask AIGC Art Exhibition
Not far away from Gomowen, APUS, a global artificial intelligence company, also appeared in the field of vision. This is the first time APUS has appeared at the Service Trade Fair.
You can see the Tianyan large model (the AiLMe large model) in the APUS exhibition hall. APUS was established in 2014 and has been serving enterprises at home and abroad. Therefore, APUS established an intelligent computing center in Singapore very early. In June this year, the Tianyan large model was officially launched in Zhengzhou, Henan, and has generated industry solutions in many fields such as medical care, government affairs, and education. According to on-site staff, APUS has cooperated with Henan Provincial Children's Hospital.
APUS Tianyan large model
In addition, the three major operators also appeared in the ICT exhibition hall. China Telecom, China Unicom, and China Mobile all demonstrated digital infrastructure, intelligent computing platforms, and computing power centers. Take China Telecom as an example. China Telecom unveiled a large model of its independently developed TeleChat. At the venue, staff introduced large model solutions and model pools to the audience.
China Telecom TeleChat large model
In addition to AI companies and operators, Zhipu AI and Yunlu Technology have also come up with their own large-model products. However, whether the new thing of large models will bring more practical value to the industry, or whether it will become a temporary trend like the Metaverse, only time will give the answer. However, judging from the on-site effects, it is worth looking forward to.
postscript
The five-day Service Trade Fair came to an end on the afternoon of the 6th, but perhaps those retirees who have worked in Shougang Park for thirty or forty years still cannot calm down for a long time. In the past decade, digitalization has become a new benchmark for demonstrating the country’s economic resilience.
Behind the successful conclusion of the 2023 Service Trade Fair, a report card has to be mentioned. Official data shows that "in 2022, China's total service import and export volume will be nearly 6 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 12.9%, and the scale will hit a record high. Ranked second in the world for 9 years.”
In the context of digitalization becoming a new opportunity in the service trade market, some new questions are still waiting for answers.
Although digital development has helped small, medium and micro enterprises to complete some procedures that were once only possible for large enterprises and large organizations, if these are allowed to truly use digital technology and truly penetrate it into their industries, some problems will actually arise. in front of them.
The first is the issue of data quality. Any digital technology requires a high-quality data base as support. At present, not only is data quality a problem, but some data are also restricted by privacy and security and cannot be made public.
Second, the current digitalization has penetrated all aspects of life and management, but there are still weak links in some places, which requires dual guidance from the government and the market.
The final big issue is the threat to cybersecurity. This problem has existed since the beginning of the Internet era. Although it has been partially overcome today, the advent of big models has further exacerbated the challenges posed by network security.
I believe that as these problems are solved step by step in the future, there will be more and bigger narratives in my country's digital development.