Running on vast amounts of real-time data, traveling through high-speed networks, the cities of the future will
be technologically smart. The companies designing
these smart systems say they'll make our urban
environments more livable, they'll keep traffic flowing, save energy and even help keep us safe. Countries all across the world
are embracing smart cities, but none more so than China. This is China's newest and
most exquisite blueprint in the new era that presents the image
of a confident, beautiful and innovative China. This is a concept favored
by Xi Jinping himself, the notion of smart
cities to smart society and that has become a sort of, like for me, a national strategy. To sustain its already
high levels of productivity, Beijing has pumped an
estimated $800 billion into high-speed rail, autonomous vehicles, smart grids and 5G networks and is piloting more than
half the world's smart cities. But for many, the trade-offs are alarming. High-tech surveillance
is already widespread for Chinese citizens and it's a growing concern for countries who import these systems
from Chinese tech firms. China's exporting elements
of its surveillance complex to third countries through the export of what
they call smart cities. By 2030, China is set to overtake the U.S. and become the world's number one economy and it's betting that smart cities will be a key part of that success. The story of China's urbanization is one without historic parallel. Every year 20 new cities are
built from scratch in China. More people now live in
China's cities and towns than live in its countryside. The economic reforms of the 1970s drove hundreds of millions of
people out of rural poverty and into China's cities in search of work. Many would end up in the factories that powered the nation's
meteoric economic rise. That's more than 10% of
the world's population living in Chinese cities. Such is the pace of development it can be hard to get your
head around the numbers. China has over 100 cities
each with their own population of over a million people. Despite this, China's urbanization rate, the percentage of people in
cities, is still some way behind other advanced economies,
like the U.S. and Japan. But by 2050, urbanization
is expected to hit 80% and it's all part of Beijing's plans. That's where smart cities come into it. A new smarter urbanization
had already been designated a national priority in the National New Type
Urbanization Plan in 2014. As well as encouraging
permanent migration to cities, that plan called for high-speed rail links and other infrastructure. But to sustain these urban populations, the cities also have to
be digitally advanced. In the Communist Party's
latest five-year plan, five interconnected city
clusters will be rolled out by the mid-2030s. Beijing contends they'll be world leaders in smart city infrastructure. Each will also be home to as
many as 100 million people. Xiongan is designed to relieve Beijing of functions not essential
to its role as the capital and provide a Chinese
solution to urban problems. This smart city strategy fits into the economic transformation or the qualitative upgrade
of its economy very well because smart city ticks all the boxes; innovation, technology, new economy and economic upgrade. It's a sort of like new urban utopia or a new urban imaginary that gives the policymakers in China some aspirations and some
inspirations as well. In the Pearl River Delta
cluster in the south is one of the most
advanced cities, Shenzhen. China's answer to Silicon
Valley used to be a fishing town 40 years ago. As its population grew 40-fold, GDP grew 11,452-fold. When I entered China in January, 2015, the city of Shenzhen, if I'm correct, had around 13-point-some million people living and working. Right now, if we look
at the amount of people living and working there now, it is close to I think, 18
or 19, maybe even 20 million. Headquartered in Shenzhen, Huawei is China's biggest tech firm. When it comes to intelligent
cities and connected cities, we have supported the
majority of the world with global and mobile
broadband infrastructures. All these digitized technologies
are helping this industry to also move higher up the value chain in a much shorter timeframe. In 2020, Shenzhen deployed
next generation 5G and high-speed broadband. Huawei, the market leader,
played a major role. Huawei has completed a
series of 5G new radio tests. The downlink peak throughput has reached over six gigabytes per
second for a single user. In Shenzhen, average broadband speeds are about one gigabyte per second. That's given local companies an edge when it comes to productivity. The timing of smart traffic lights are adjusted to improve flow efficiently. Surveillance camera systems
capture traffic violations. It sits within a horizontal layer of mobile and broadband
and fixed technologies to connect it all. That's what makes it intelligent. It understands what it is for. It optimizes and it utilizes all these broadband
connectivities for applications for people to stay at home and whilst at home using
applications from the government, for example, to do this citizen
or residency registration, or transfer from one city to another city. The same for taxation,
the same for utilities, gas, water, electricity
and what have you. No more need to go to city hall, which is downtown city
center, for paperwork and what have you. In the process of all of this, in return, it lowers the burden
on traffic, of course, because these millions of people in five, six years timeframe added to the population of Shenzhen in itself would also burden traffic
in a tremendous way. But of course, these smart cities are imprinted
with the characteristics of China's surveillance state. The Chinese people are being watched in ways that earlier generations were not. I think there's a pretty
crucial distinction to make in privacy in terms of
protection of one's personal data against companies misusing it and privacy in the sense of
an intrinsic civil liberty to protect against overly
excessive government interference into one's personal life, Privacy, in the first sense, there are actually very
robust discussions in China. There are personal
information protection laws being drafted, data
security laws being drafted that are meant to protect privacy from company intrusion. As for the privacy in the second sense, there's very little discussion, very little protection
from government intrusion upon one's personal privacy. If companies are collecting less data and are being more secure with how they manage your personal data and your personal information, that might also limit the
ability of the government to get data from companies. Regarding Chinese citizens' reactions to AI intruding upon their personal lives, there's a lot more discussion
in Chinese social media, Chinese blogs, than we
would assume in the West. Inside China, local governments now have a more effective
way to monitor citizens on a real-time basis. Under China's Cyber Security Law, companies must store users'
data on local servers and decrypt the data on
request from the authorities. A new data security law which just passed on June 11th is something that Chinese
government really cared about and no one is going to get past it. Others worry that Chinese companies may share sensitive
information picked up abroad with Chinese intelligence services. Huawei has famously been
accused of being dangerous because countries like the U.S. think it could use its telecom equipment to spy for the Chinese government. Huawei denies the allegations, arguing that U.S. restrictions
aren't about cybersecurity but are really designed to
safeguard American dominance of global tech. China's ambassador to the U.K. tells the BBC that Britain's decision to
drop Huawei from its 5G network is a bad move for the country. I think the U.K. should have its own independent foreign policy rather than to dance to
the tune of Americans. Despite the international scrutiny, there still seems to be a demand for China's smart city model. Chinese vendors have won contracts for smart city infrastructure
in about 50 cities worldwide according to a study by RWR Advisory. Most are in illiberal societies. Whether such privacy fears
are overstated or not, the opportunities are too great for China big tech to ignore. Chinese CEOs lined up
to pledge their support for President Xi Jinping's recent "common prosperity" policy despite the hit their
businesses would take as part of his crackdown
on various industries. The regulation of the technology giants and to what extent our
behavior, our action, even our travel patterns,
our shopping and preferences, they are being utilized
for commercial purposes and again, this is a global
issue and a global concern. They're huge market opportunities. So they work together
to promote what I call the smart city movement in China. But Beijing's dreams of utopian living could come crashing down. The very urbanization
that's led to smart cities also resulted in vast ghost towns as the pace of building was too fast for newcomers moving in. For the developers, kick-starting these projects
means taking on huge debt. So when buildings aren't
filled quickly enough, that can mean companies going bust. Chinese authorities are now grappling with how to handle developers
like Evergrande Group, which now account for almost half the world's distressed debt. If China's economy takes a hit while its property developers go bust, smart cities suddenly become
a lot harder to build. Despite its Orwellian overtones, this convergence between the
state and private tech firms to create smart city technology
clearly has major benefits. Smart city apps helped
China contain the spread of the Covid-19 virus, allowing Beijing to turn its economy from contraction to growth
faster than any other nation and smart city ambassadors
like Edwin Diender at Huawei see their technologies as
essential to our future. It creates more insights in terms of how and where
is this city, for example, consuming electricity, consuming power and only with digital we're able to create a
visualization for that, create a better understanding for that, but most importantly, have a principle of big data analytics to help us understand and create insights in how to anticipate. But I think the most important one and the one that is the most sustainable, of course sits with energy transition. I truly believe energy transition is the next wave of innovation
for digital transformation. The real question is whether
smart cities will be designed for the people who live in them or for the governments and
tech firms who run them? I strongly believe that a smart city, even though it's built upon technology, but it should not be technology-centric. It's about the livability, sustainability and the public good and
the social inclusion. Our cities will thrive in the future by building and upgrading
infrastructure with technologies that tackle the biggest challenges of a rapidly urbanizing world. China aims to be a leader in this field, both at home and abroad. One thing is for sure, China's urban landscape will
be dramatically refashioned in the decades ahead.
