Smart Cities Will Increase Before The End Of 2017
- Apr 21, 2017
- 1 min read
The Tianjin smart city is being used as a model for sustainable living across the country. (AFP / YouTube)
BEIJING – Around 500 Chinese cities are expected to transform into “smart cities” during 2017.
There are currently 300 cities that have signed-up for smart-city construction projects with help from IT companies like Tencent and Ant Financial as cited in China Daily.
China’s first "internet highway" is a product of the smart city initiative, which is known as the Shanghai-Hangzhou-Ningbo Highway. It was developed in cooperation with the China Guangfa Bank and mobile payment service provider Alipay.
Thanks to smart-city applications, the time spent paying toll fees in the highway is greatly reduced by using mobile payments.
Wu Hequan, an academician with the Chinese Academy of Engineering said that the creation of smart cities will be widely embraced due in part to the convenience brought about by smart-city applications.
The IT industrial chain will also be promoted substantially as more enterprises get involved in smart city initiatives.
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