Yang Mei

    yangmei_szdaily@163.com

    WHEN asked to pick one thing that will dominate our world over the next 30 years, you might think of artificial intelligence or big data. But at the 2017 China (Shenzhen) IT Summit yesterday, Alibaba founder Jack Ma offered a different answer in his keynote speech. He believes that the coming 30 years will be the era of the Internet, during which major industrial changes will occur.

    The first industry is retail. He said that in the next 10 years, pure e-commerce and offline retail will face many difficulties, so the new type of retail will have to consider online and offline logistics as a whole. “The future retail industry should not just think about how to sell stuff, but how to provide good service to their customers,” he said.

    The second is the manufacturing industry. He pointed out that the current standardized and large-scale manufacturing industry will lead nowhere and only a customized and smart one will be able to survive and thrive.

    The Internet will also have an impact on the financial industry. “The traditional financial industry in China only cares about the 20 percent large-sized enterprises, State-owned enterprises and foreign-funded enterprises, but fails to pay attention to the 80 percent comprising consumers and small- and medium-sized enterprises. But the new financial industry should put the interests of the consumers and small- and medium-sized enterprises first,” said Ma, who mentioned the success of Alipay and WeChat Pay to support his viewpoints.

    Technology will be revolutionized, too. According to Ma, the future core technology will not be chips, operating systems or a database of personal computers. “China should find a new path in such things as big data, mobile Internet, cloud computing, mobile operating system, smart chips and artificial intelligence,” Ma said.

    The last sector is new energy. “The energy for the first technological revolution was coal, for the second was oil and for the third is data,” said Ma, who added that each technological revolution has changed employment.

    He also said that people’s ignorance of new technology will steal their jobs, citing an example of a beggar in Hangzhou who asks passers-by for money with a QR code.