On November 9, 2022 world internet conference opened in Wuzhen, Zhejiang.
At the plenary meeting after the opening ceremony, Zhang Yong, Chairman and CEO of Alibaba Group, shared his observation and practice on the integration of digital economy and real economy.
Zhang Yong said,Ali’s growth benefits from the opportunities of the times and the big market in China. Alibaba will always take root in the real economy, make good use of digital technology to help small and medium-sized enterprises, and accelerate the arrival of industrial changes.
The following are the main contents of Zhang Yong’s speech at the conference:
In the past 20 years, the wave of Internet and digital technology has swept the world. As a pioneer in actively embracing digitalization, the upsurge of building a digital economy has risen in an all-round way in China. By last year, China’s digital economy reached 45.5 trillion yuan, accounting for nearly 40% of GDP, and became one of the important engines to promote China’s economic growth.
We see that,Data has become a new cell of the whole society, digital infrastructure constitutes a new skeleton of society, and digitalization of industry has become a new texture of social operation.Digital economy is increasingly integrated into economy, society and people’s daily lives.
Report to the 20th CPC National Congress put forward that "the focus of economic development should be on the real economy" and mentioned "accelerating the development of digital economy". The real economy is the basic guarantee for a country’s modernization, while the digital economy is the most active and penetrating economic type in the world at present.
Both digital industrialization and industrial digitalization are the products of the integration and development of digital economy and real economy. You have me, and I have you.The integration of the two will surely become a strong driving force for national economic growth and social progress.
With the continuous development and evolution of digital wave in the past 20 years, and the continuous integration with social economy and life, Alibaba’s development has also experienced three major historical stages: participating in the construction of digital circulation, digital logistics and digital computing. Here, I also share my own summary and thinking from our years of practice.
First of all, looking back at the early days of Internet development, China’s huge population and market provided natural soil for the development of digital economy, which made the commerce and trade service industry take the lead in directly connecting with end customers or consumers by building digital circulation channels, and became the driving force for the rapid growth of digital economy in China in the early days.
Alibaba’s growth benefits from this opportunity and the development potential of the unique China market.By building a digital commerce and trade circulation platform, on the one hand, it connects the vast number of China consumers on the demand side, on the other hand, it connects tens of millions of merchants and diversified service ecology on the supply side.
Today, Taobao Tmall, Box Horse, a new retail representative of Ali, and RT Mart, a large supermarket after digital comprehensive transformation, are using digital distribution channels and digital marketing methods to gain insight and create market demand and better serve consumers’ pursuit of a better life. On the other hand, through the promotion of demand side, it can not only create supply, but also reduce the circulation cost of merchants, improve business efficiency, and promote or even force the reform of supply side.
Second, the change of digitalization to the real economy not only occurs in the field of large circulation, but also is more widely integrated into other fields. The construction of "great circulation" has also spawned a digital "great logistics" system that is closely related to everyone today. The logistics system is related to the national economy and people’s livelihood, which not only runs through all links of production, distribution, circulation and consumption, but also relates to the first, second and third industries, especially in the emergency such as epidemic situation, which highlights its strategic importance.
Logistics is connected, materials are connected, production can be sustained, the market can prosper, and life can be stable. In the past ten years, the annual express parcel volume in China has increased from 5.7 billion to 108.3 billion, ranking first in the world for eight consecutive years, and the annual parcel volume in 2021 will account for more than half of the world. Behind all this, the role of digitalization is crucial.
Alibaba Group’s smart logistics platform rookie was founded nearly ten years ago. In the past ten years, starting with the electronic face sheet, we have first realized the digitalization of express parcels, and are now moving towards the comprehensive digitalization of logistics elements.The low-cost and high-efficiency operation mode brought by digitalization, combined with the unique consumption and labor market pattern of China, has made today’s efficient express delivery network.
This network is also striding towards overseas markets. At present, rookie has more than 240 charter flights for trunk transportation every month in the world, and has cooperated with more than 50 ports around the world to open up an intelligent customs clearance system, and a high-quality global parcel network is taking shape.
Third, the agricultural age depends on water conservancy, the industrial age depends on electricity, and the digital age depends on computing power. With the deepening of trade circulation and the development of logistics, digitalization not only changes sales and marketing, but also extends to all fields of production and operation of enterprises such as R&D and manufacturing, and can also be applied to all aspects of urban and social public governance. The use of data in all walks of life is increasing geometrically, and computing is becoming an indispensable universal ability. The real era of cloud computing is coming.
As early as 2017, the country proposed the construction of industrial Internet, and digital technology began to promote more traditional industries for digital transformation. Through the digital reconstruction of production, design and manufacturing links, the best process is deduced by using big data model, the labor cost is reduced, the productivity and efficiency are improved, and the traditional industries are full of new vitality.
Alibaba is also involved in a series of processes to help digitize traditional industries.For example, Zhoushan Port in Ningbo is known as the "No.1 port in the world", and its throughput ranks first in the world for many years, which is closely related to the concept of "digital strong port".
Based on the technical services provided by Alibaba, such as cloud computing, artificial intelligence and 5G, Zhoushan Meishan Port has developed its own terminal operating system to create a "port brain", including cooperative automatic driving of vehicles and roads in the port area, intelligent cooperative scheduling of yards, high-precision positioning of gantry crane loading and unloading, berth prediction, and so on. According to the data such as the duration of the ship’s stay and the type of goods, the berth can be allocated reasonably, and the storage yard for loading and unloading can be analyzed, even to the exact location. This alone is equivalent to saving a berth with a cost of 1 billion for Zhoushan Meishan Port every two years.
These practices and cases all illustrate that the digital economy can be fully integrated with the real economy, and such integration can also make the digital economy more inclusive.At present, the society is entering a new stage of development, and in pursuit of higher quality development, it is necessary to make the development results more inclusive.
Alibaba Group has been making continuous efforts in the popularization of digital technology, hoping to create more employment opportunities by helping more industries, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, enjoy digital dividends. We believe that this is the best way for a platform-based enterprise like Ali to create social value.
2022 is destined to be a very crucial year in history.Although challenges such as climate change, recurrent epidemics and global inflation are still around, we are full of confidence in the future.This confidence stems from the high consistency between Ali’s own development goals and the country’s long-term development goals, and from the high consensus of the whole society on promoting the development of the real economy with digital technology.
Alibaba will always take root in the real economy, actively participate in the construction of a community of destiny in cyberspace, make good use of digital technology, participate in the process of digitalization of industries in all walks of life, and serve consumers’ continuous pursuit of a better life. Based on full consensus and common belief, let’s be firm in our peers and create a better digital future.