A Chinese province gets a digital makeover as Tencent shifts focus

Yunnan, the ancient province in southwestern China famous for hand-picked tea, snow-capped mountains, and the mystical hidden paradise of Shangri-La, is undergoing a digital makeover.

Facial recognition is deployed at the gates of tourist attractions to facilitate faster entry. Sensors are also installed along highways for instant toll payments without the need for drivers to slow down or stop.

Tourists can skip the queues by buying tickets online, watch live videos of crowds at sites to better plan their trip, or find the nearest available restrooms all through a smartphone app co-developed by Chinese tech giant Tencent Holdings.

Photo credit: piotrkt / 123RF

The Yunnan government has made “digitization” a key goal in upgrading the local tourism industry, according to its 2019 work report. The app, as well as a mini program on the do-everything social app WeChat, have together attracted more than 23 million users, according to Tencent.

The tourism app is just as important to Yunnan as it is to Tencent, which has pledged to help bring local governments and businesses online as part of a recent shift in direction for the operator of China’s biggest social media and gaming businesses.

“This is a significant benchmark project for Tencent to help the digital transformation of the real economy and industries,” Martin Lau, president of Tencent, told an audience of more than 5,000 on Tuesday at the company’s Global Digital Ecosystem Summit in Kunming, capital of Yunnan.

Tencent’s shift to serve enterprises and governments in their digital transformation came amid a government crackdown last year on its cash cow of online gaming over concerns that addiction to video games was enfeebling the young. WeChat’s current user base of 1.1 billion has reached a saturation point in a country with an estimated internet population of 829 million.

The company is counting on growth from the corporate sector with its cloud business, artificial intelligence, and other technologies, and by leveraging tools such as WeChat to help enterprises reach consumers. Cloud computing will be the platform on which data analytics, AI, and security systems can be customized for use by the retail, financial services, transport, healthcare, and education sectors, according to the company.

The new direction is in line with China’s wider ambitions to move its industries up the value chain and better compete globally in emerging technologies such as AI, which has been dubbed the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

“The internet is no longer an industry itself, but a core capability for all other industries. Successful companies in the future will be digitized companies,” Lau said.

Traditional companies fear missing out on the digital upgrade, which is why many were represented at the Tencent summit this week.

“We have to be a part of the digital transformation,” said Dong Shenghao, president of the Green Health Industry Research Institute under the state-owned Yunnan Metropolitan Construction Investment Group. He attended the event to see what Tencent has to offer, believing that its flagship social media apps WeChat and QQ can deliver better access to potential customers interested in health and wellness.

“We hope to have capabilities in data analysis and other technologies to help us identify and connect our customers, and we’re ready to invest in these technologies,” Dong said.