Ping An Insurance Group, China’s largest insurer by market value, has set its eyes on the country’s smart city projects to bolster its transformation into a technology-driven financial conglomerate while taking on established technology giants.
Mature technologies used to build a smart city will be fully developed and expanded to various mainland cities next year as the company looks to secure a front-runner position in the segment nationwide, said Yu Ning, head of Ping An’s technology entrepreneurs division, in an interview with South China Morning Post.
Read more: CN: Ping An invests in smart cities as it transitions into tech
With mandates from China’s central government to push the digitization of public services in the country, Zhejiang province’s Hangzhou is at the forefront of this effort. Yuan Jiayun, deputy secretary of the Communist Party in Zhejiang province, said that digitization is driving innovation in the city, but also in e-governance. Speaking at Alibaba’s The Computing Conference held in Hangzhou’s Yunqi Town today (September 19), he said that the local government would continue integrating the internet into public services.
Read more: CN: Hangzhou is becoming a pioneer in urban digitization
We live in an era where technology breaks new ground almost every day.
Engineers and researchers are moving quickly too, with a focus on making the places we live in better, safer and smarter via new innovations.
According to the World Health Organization, every year, traffic accidents claim the lives of more than 260,000 Chinese people.
Read more: CN: What will a future city look like with smart transportation?
Alibaba, Tencent and Huawei are the other technology companies that make up PATH and which all bring different areas of expertise
The Chinese financial group Ping An is introducing new initiatives to help create smart cities across the country at the fourth China Smart City International Expo 2018, which is taking place in Shenzhen from 21-23 August. This includes its 1+N smart city integrated platform and solutions.
According to research firm IDC, the big-data and business analytics market would grow globally from US$150 billion in 2017 to over US$210 billion by 2020.
Singapore has tried to make the best use of customer data, in an anonymous manner. Its three telephone companies – Singtel, Starhub and M1 – provide data analytics to businesses as well as government agencies.
Read more: CN: Data sharing platform key if Hong Kong aims to be top-class smart city