Why China needs to accelerate industrial internet efforts amid economic slowdown, trade tensions

China’s transformation into a services-driven economy is likely to accelerate as industrial internet developments gather pace across the country, according to a senior executive at venture capital firm Gobi Partners.

Michael Zhu Lin, a managing partner at the firm, predicted that about 85 per cent of Chinese companies will establish cloud computing-based activities over time and that enterprise data generated would expand on par with the amount of information gathered from consumer-based applications. He made those projections on Wednesday during his keynote at a company event in Beijing attended mostly by start-ups.

As the next driving force in the world’s second largest economy, the industrial internet involves the broader adoption across industries of advanced applications that take advantage of next-generation wireless networks, big data, artificial intelligence (AI) and the so-called Internet of Things (IoT).

It links together three key elements – intelligent machines, advanced analytics and people at work – whose data are gathered by connected IoT devices. The processed information would help companies pursue higher levels of efficiency, productivity and performance.

Data generated by connected devices is now starting to help companies run more efficiently and gain insight into business processes, while consumers’ access to data is changing how they are informed about the status of households, vehicles and family members, as well as their own health and fitness.