Wuhan East Lake New Technology Industrial Development Zone is also known as China Optical Valley. In this innovative place leading the trend of advanced science and technology, a "core" force is attracting the attention of the whole country and even the world.
On May 15, the Core-Driven High-end Forum and the 20 19 Forum of National Development Research Institute of Peking University (Wuhan) jointly sponsored by National Development Research Institute of Peking University and Changjiang Daily Newspaper Group were held in China Optics Valley Science and Technology Exhibition Center, Gaoxin Avenue, Donghu High-tech Zone, Wuhan.
In the roundtable forum, Wang Bin, director of the artificial intelligence laboratory of Xiaomi Group, Hu Yu, co-founder and chairman of Wuhan Huilian Unlimited Technology Co., Ltd., Xia Guang, chairman of Wuhan Xintai Technology Co., Ltd., Gong Qiang, dean of Wen Lan College of Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, and Deng Yan, the moderator of the roundtable and executive editor-in-chief of Investment Times, had a heated discussion on the development of China's chip industry and Wuhan's unique advantages in this field.
Deng Yan: At the end of 20 18, at the Fourth Session of the Eleventh Hubei Provincial Party Committee and the Provincial Economic Work Conference, the strategic layout of industrial development of "one core driving, two belts supporting and three districts cooperating" was formally put forward. We know that for a long time, Wuhan has given people the impression that steel is the main industry, but automobiles are the main industry. 20 1 1 under the local government's "industrial multiplication" plan, three emerging industries, information technology, life and health, and intelligent manufacturing, began to rise, and the proportion of investment increased from 37.7% to 63.6% in five years. Nowadays, around the national "core industrial cluster", Wuhan, whose GDP accounts for 38% of the whole Hubei Province, is facing a new "window period" of transformation.
Coincidentally, the "20 19 China City Business Environment Index Evaluation Report" just released a few days ago shows that Wuhan ranks sixth among the top cities in the national economic aggregate 100. This report covers four municipalities directly under the central government and important large and medium-sized cities in 23 provinces and autonomous regions. Starting from the two dimensions of soft environment and hard environment, 7 secondary indicators and 35 tertiary indicators comprehensively reflect a city's comprehensive support for investment and entrepreneurship, enterprise management and attracting talents.
Gong Qiang returned from the United States, and his main research directions are regional innovation and economic development, government finance and public policy. What do you think of the above phenomenon? What are the advantages of Wuhan in "core industries"?
Gong Qiang: Wuhan's "core industries" have the momentum of growth, and both universities and transportation have advantages.
First of all, Wuhan colleges and universities have concentrated resources and strong scientific research strength, which is conducive to personnel training and industrial agglomeration. As an important national science and education base, Wuhan has a large number of colleges and universities, and its comprehensive strength in science and education should not be underestimated. There are not only many famous schools including Wuhan University, Huazhong University of Science and Technology and Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, but also more than one million college students, ranking first in the country and even in the world, which can provide a large number of highly sophisticated professionals for the development of "core industries".
Second, Wuhan has a superior geographical position and a solid industrial base, which is conducive to the transportation of talents and the development of regional economy. Wuhan is located in the central core area, with convenient transportation. It is known as the thoroughfare of nine provinces and transports hundreds of thousands of college students abroad every year. In addition, as one of the birthplaces of modern industry and commerce, it can lay a solid industrial foundation for the development of "core industries".
Considering the relationship between urban environment and the development of strategic emerging industries, the concentration of regional resources will have an important impact on the quality of its economic development. If a region fully integrates core resources, it can effectively give play to the inherent advantages of industrial base and humanistic heritage, and further form a highland of talents. On the other hand, if the region can't reasonably gather superior resources, it will cause talent depression, which is not conducive to the all-round development of the regional economy.
Therefore, the competition between countries or regions is actually the competition of the government's ruling ability. A high level of government's ruling ability will enhance the concentration of regional resources, help the development of strategic emerging industries, and significantly improve the quality of local economic development. In fact, whether it is technological development or artificial intelligence, there are people behind it, or the competition between high-end talents and talents. In recent years, Wuhan insists on giving priority to talents and promotes regional high-quality development through talent introduction. The development trend is good and the economic growth rate is relatively fast, which fully reflects that the development and strategic planning of Hubei Province and Wuhan City are relatively in place and has played an effective role in promoting the development of emerging industries.
Deng Yan: At present, in Optics Valley, enterprises have diverse ecology and full potential for new kinetic energy. For example, Xiaomi, as a unicorn enterprise, is already the world's largest IoT (Internet of Things) consumer-grade IoT platform, and it is also actively deployed in artificial intelligence. Lei Jun, chairman of Xiaomi, once said: "The arrival of the artificial intelligence era has brought us super opportunities at least one order of magnitude greater than that of the mobile Internet era."
As the director of artificial intelligence laboratory of Xiaomi Group, Wang Bin previously worked in China Academy of Sciences, mainly engaged in scientific research related to natural language processing and information retrieval. This is a great leap from academia to industry. How to treat China's position and direction in the global artificial intelligence tide? As far as Wuhan is concerned, what kind of voice can it make in this field?
Wang Bin, Director of Artificial Intelligence Laboratory of Xiaomi Group
Wang Bin: Artificial intelligence is an important opportunity for China to become a world power, which is different from other countries. For example, the artificial intelligence strategy of the United States may be biased towards national security, and the EU may be more private and safer. China's artificial intelligence is actually more radical and closely integrated with the industry. It is our main goal to transform and upgrade the industry with artificial intelligence and make it technical. In this process, I think China's position is very accurate. Our country's development strategy is divided into three steps: one is to keep pace with the world; Second, leading in some core technologies; Third, become the center of artificial intelligence in the world.
In recent years, artificial intelligence is very hot, accompanied by some other keywords, such as Internet of Things and intelligent manufacturing, and Wuhan happens to be very related to these two words, which is a very good opportunity for Wuhan, and it may be at the forefront of China and even the world.
Deng Yan: The theme of this round table is "Innovation leads, cultivating and expanding new kinetic energy". As far as we know, the slogan put forward by Wuhan at present is "Chip leads innovation, panel drives growth, and terminal network supports scale". However, both chips and panels are industries with high capital density, long investment cycle and high risks. It really needs the government, enterprises and social forces to intervene with the greatest strength and great courage, and at the same time, it needs to face the uncertainty brought by technological iteration.
Today, there are representatives of two optical valley enterprises. One is Wuhan Huilian Unlimited, which has been selected as "Gazelle Enterprise" in Optics Valley for three consecutive years. Wuhan has built 100 security intelligent residential areas, of which 1/3 is built by Wuhan Huilian indefinitely. Joining Wuhan Huilian Unlimited in Deloitte's "20 18 Optical Valley Stars List" is another chip company-Wuhan Xintai Technology Co., Ltd., Hu Yu and Xia Guang are at the core of "core industries". How to treat this contradiction between risk and opportunity?
Xia Guang: Our company was established on 20 10. The idea is that if you don't follow, you must be original and subversive. This year, we have persisted for the tenth year, and the revenue is almost zero, but this year it began to break out. Now it can provide users with stable chips, and it is completely independent intellectual property rights, which will bring great surprises to the whole industry in the future.
Hu Yu, co-founder and chairman of Wuhan Huilian Unlimited Technology Co., Ltd.
Hu Weiwei: Huilian Unlimited is actually the core communication technology of narrowband in 5G communication. As a local enterprise, Huilian has developed for so many years and has a deep understanding of new kinetic energy. Compared with other parts of the country, Optics Valley has achieved three "specialties" in enterprise support.
First, "expertise" means "talent". In recent years, Optics Valley has made great achievements in talent training and talent introduction. In addition to a large number of local universities in Optics Valley, Optics Valley has also introduced a large number of first-class high-tech enterprises such as Huawei and Xiaomi in recent years. These "big factories" and small and medium-sized enterprises have formed a three-dimensional echelon training of technical talents, which is very important for the development of enterprises and is also of great significance to the economic development of Optics Valley.
Second, "specialization" means "ecological chain and industrial chain". For the development of the industry, whether it is the chip or the artificial intelligence industry, there is no way to land without the basic elements of production, integration and application scenarios. Why do American chips do better than us? A large part of the reason is that Silicon Valley has such a three-dimensional industrial chain support. At present, compared with other regions in China, Optics Valley has a deeper understanding of the industrial chain of science and technology industry, which provides the foundation and nutrients for the development of enterprises.
Third, "specialization" is "market kinetic energy". Compared with other regions, the kinetic energy of Optics Valley, which is led by the government to guide the development of enterprises, is more "professional". The government itself has the demand for refined urban construction, and Optics Valley will give priority to providing more running-in opportunities for local enterprises in the project. In this running-in process, enterprises have obtained the optimization of products and schemes, and this experience is very valuable. For example, Huilian's smart and safe community project in Optics Valley Ideal City, through repeated trials in the ideal city project, has now landed in more than ten cities across the country. The spark ignited by the government from the market side can bring a very broad development space to enterprises.
Deng Yan: I noticed such a set of data. In 20 17, the output value of China's local chip industry was 500 billion, and the import value was 270 billion US dollars. According to the plan, the self-sufficiency rate of domestic chips in China will reach 40% in 2020 and 70% in 2025. Simply calculate, even the replacement rate of 40% is as high as 760 billion yuan, equivalent to 20 18. By 2020, China's chip output value will rise to126 billion yuan, with a compound annual growth rate of 36%. What does 36% data mean? For reference, during the golden period of China real estate from 2003 to 20 12, the compound annual growth rate was only 30%.
The problem is that although the chip industry in China has developed rapidly from design to manufacturing in the past few years, it still lags behind in independent core technologies, especially in base station chips and artificial intelligence chips. How do the guests present view this gap and shorten the timetable? How should the government and enterprises play their respective roles and leverage each other?
Wang Bin: We are really far behind others in core technology. We have been narrowing the gap and investing a lot of money. I think we should first face up to the gap. Although there are many patents in our thesis, some core technologies are still lacking. The second is to find the key points to do, from the guidance of the government to the fight of enterprises in the market, this spirit of grinding a sword for ten years is very necessary. I think entrepreneurs with core technologies in the future are very important to our country.
Hu Yu: The chips in the United States are similar to those in Qualcomm. They defined a standard from a technical point of view to promote the development of the application market. This is an "American" business road. In China, the business path is more to promote technology development from the application market. Take artificial intelligence as an example. At present, China is the largest artificial intelligence market in the world, and foreign artificial intelligence enterprises are also targeting the domestic market. Compared with foreign markets, artificial intelligence mostly stays in games and other fields, and China has gradually entered the category of smart city management, which shows that the application scenarios of domestic urbanization machine management are very rich and the market is very broad.
At the same time, it is also very important for enterprises to export industry norms and standards in their respective fields. For example, Qualcomm in foreign countries and Huawei in China have all defined industries and exported the norms and standards in their respective fields. Huilian has participated in the formulation of industry norms for narrowband Internet of Things for many times.
Xia Guang, Chairman of Wuhan Xintai Technology Co., Ltd.
Gong Qiang, Dean of Wen Lan College, Zhongnan University of Economics and Law
Gong Qiang: There is a misunderstanding in the current economic development that the development of science and technology only depends on science and technology. But in fact, compared with science and technology, core and creation are the key to the development of science and technology. Take Apple as an example. Apple's products are popular not only because of the application of advanced technology, but also because of its more core competitiveness, that is, unique design and innovative ideas.
At the same time, the recent trade war has also sounded the alarm for us: without core and creative things, a country or region will be in a passive position. Just blindly processing and OEM will cause the loss of regional competitiveness. Only by constantly improving the core competitiveness can enterprises have broader development prospects and social values.
Deng Yan: As the "fifth city in China" ranked by China's comprehensive strength, Wuhan ranks 40th in the world in terms of global urban economic competitiveness and 7th in China, and is known as "the city with the most venture capital potential in China in 20 years". In the first quarter of this year, Wuhan's GDP increased by 8.4% year-on-year, which was two percentage points higher than that of the whole country. It can be seen that Wuhan's new kinetic energy is accelerating its agglomeration and has great potential for high-quality development.
There is a saying in the Tao Te Ching: "The winner is strong and the loser is strong." At this moment, this sentence can be used to encourage. We look forward to Wuhan, a fiery city that constantly releases new kinetic energy for development due to innovation, and constantly changes its "core"!