14 | Tuesday, October 13, 2020 HONG KONG EDITION | CHINA DAILY BUSINESS Baidu’s self-driving China Three taxis start passenger Gorges Corp helps fight services in Beijing poverty By FAN FEIFEI [email protected] By ZHENG XIN Autonomous driving [email protected] Chinese internet search giant Baidu Inc officially opened Apollo is definitely the China Three Gorges Corp, the Go Robotaxi, its self-driving taxi future development builder and operator of the service, to the public in Beijing, world’s largest hydroelectric becoming the first company to direction of the power project — the Three Gorg- carry passengers in autonomous automobile es Dam — has been stepping up vehicles in the capital. efforts to pull more poor people With a fleet of 40 vehicles, the industry.” out of poverty through continu- service covers the largest total Jiang Zheng, a self-driving ous investment. area and the longest road network expert at China’s GAC research The corporation had donated of about 700 kilometers for an and development center more than 85 billion yuan autonomous driving test area in ($12.46 billion) for poverty relief China. It has established nearly in the country by the end of Sep- 100 pickup and drop-off stations autonomous driving. tember, with an annual donation in residential and business areas “Autonomous driving is definite- of more than 1.4 billion yuan in the Yizhuang area, Haidian and ly the future development direc- since 2016, said Lei Mingshan, Shunyi districts of Beijing. tion of the automobile industry. It chairman of the company. Passengers in Beijing can now not only solves traffic safety prob- Visitors check out a drone during the Digital China Summit in Fuzhou, Fujian province, on Monday. It has helped more than 110 hail autonomous cabs free of charge lems, but also greatly improves the HU MEIDONG / CHINA DAILY townships across the nation via Baidu Maps or Apollo Go apps efficiency of transportation, brings through more than 1,400 pro- without advance reservation. about economic benefits and liber- jects, including road repair, hos- The move came after the Bei- ates people from repetitive driv- pital and school construction jing-based tech giant opened its ing,” said Jiang Zheng, a self- and supply donations, Lei said. robotaxi service to the public in driving expert at China’s GAC In response to the central lead- Cangzhou, Hebei province, in research and development center. Digital event sharpens ership’s call for “targeted poverty August, extending robotaxi cover- The launch of self-driving taxi alleviation”, which demands tai- age to the downtown area of a city services in some designated areas lored policies to suit different for the first time in China. might be the best application sce- local situations, the corporation In April, Baidu opened its self- nario for the technologies due to is responsible for four counties driving taxi service in Changsha, high operating costs of private in Chongqing, Jiangxi province Hunan province. Robotaxi provides vehicles, Jiang said. focus on breakthroughs and the Inner Mongolia autono- free rides to passengers across an China is planning to realize the mous region. With an accumu- area of 130 square kilometers. scale production of vehicles capa- Experts at three-day summit underline “Digitalization will play a direct lated investment of up to 860 As the first city in China to regu- ble of conditional autonomous and great role in promoting the million yuan in these regions, late and open autonomous driving driving and commercialization of new solutions in governance, industry ‘dual circulation’ development pat- the corporation has targeted road test zones, Beijing has com- highly autonomous vehicles in tern to take the domestic market as donations of medical and, edu- prehensive infrastructure and pol- certain circumstances by 2025, By CHENG YU and HU MEIDONG kicked off in Fuzhou, Fujian prov- the mainstay while letting internal cation resources and infrastruc- icies to foster high-speed according to a blueprint issued by in Fuzhou ince, on Monday. and external markets boost each ture construction to lift all local development of the industry. the National Development and The three-day summit attracted a other,” said Yu Weiguo, Party secre- impoverished people out of pov- Last year, Beijing ranked first in Reform Commission, the Minis- China has made considerable slew of technology giants such as tary of Fujian. erty and helped build a moder- China for the number of test licens- try of Industry and Information progress in the development of the Huawei Technologies Co, Alibaba “By smoothing production, cir- ately prosperous society in all es and vehicle categories, as well as Technology and nine other minis- digital economy and will beef up Group and Baidu Inc. culation and consumption, digitali- respects. diversity of test scenarios. In addi- tries. efforts to develop frontier technolo- “It’s necessary to leverage key zation will closely link the industry tion, Beijing has issued the most Baidu is one of several Chinese gies like operating systems to sharp- technological innovation capabili- chain, supply chain and service stringent safety requirements for technology firms that have en its competitiveness, top officials, ties to drive digital governance chain, and move the digital China 85 manned autonomous driving tests launched autonomous taxi servi- experts and company executives capability, achieve core national construction to a new high,” he billion yuan in China to ensure the safety and ces to the public in the country. said on Monday. competitiveness and set a global said. amount that China Three reliability of the industry. Didi Chuxing, China’s largest ride- “The nation’s digital economy benchmark. China, with unique As the COVID-19 pandemic con- Gorges Corp has donated for The self-driving technology is hailing platform, announced in continued to make breakthroughs data and application capabilities, is tinued globally, Zhong Nanshan, poverty alleviation in China expected to witness large-scale June the opening of its on-de- in technological innovation, with expected to step up the transparen- Chinese respiratory expert who was by the end of September commercial application in the mand robotaxi service to passen- the number of 5G-related stan- cy and standardization of digital awarded the Medal of the Republic, next five years, said Robin Li, gers in parts of Shanghai. dard essential patent and artificial governance,” said Liu Qingfeng, the country’s highest honor, pointed chairman and CEO of Baidu. So far, road tests for self-driving intelligence-related patents appli- chairman of iFlytek, a Chinese AI out that the digital economy has China, a country with a popu- Li made the remarks at the Bai- vehicles are available in more than cations ranking first globally,” said company. played an important role in combat- lation of 1.4 billion, has slashed du World 2020, the company’s 20 provinces and cities in China. Zhuang Rongwen, director of the Liu further said more efforts are ing the outbreak in China, especially the number of people living in annual flagship technology con- Companies such as SAIC Motor, Cyberspace Administration of needed to promote digital govern- in treatment and vaccine research poverty by more than 700 mil- ference held in Beijing last month. BMW, Didi Chuxing and DeepBlue China. ance through promotion of technol- and development. lion since 1978. However, it is still According to him, intelligent Technology have obtained authori- Standard essential patents refer ogy innovation in AI with an aim to “Through analysis of 1,000 pieces in an uphill battle to enrich mil- infrastructure based on the vehi- zation for passenger-carrying to patents that are indispensable for strengthen more fields. of big data related to patients, we get lions of people who still live cle-road coordination system is tests. the implementation of a standard- Fueled by booming new tech- to know the clinical characteristics below the poverty line and to expected to improve traffic effi- Yang Diange, dean of the auto- ized technology. Any company that nologies and supportive policies of the epidemic, which is the basis achieve the goal of eliminating ciency by 15 to 30 percent, thus mobile engineering department at owns standard essential patents can of the government, the digital for preventing it and curing it at the absolute poverty by the end of bringing in 2.4 percent to 4.8 per- Tsinghua University, said the L4 request royalty payments from the economy is gradually becoming beginning of the outbreak,” Zhong this year. cent absolute economic growth. self-driving vehicles are expected entities that use them. the key driving force of the coun- said. The Three Gorges Dam, Chi- “China is taking the lead in the to enter into large-scale commer- “To offer more impetus, more try’s economic development, “We also leverage big data to pre- na’s largest water project, has autonomous driving sector cial use in 2030. Level 4 autonomy efforts will be made for break- experts said. dict the peak of disease develop- played a key role in water adjust- around the world,” said Li Zhenyu, means the car can drive by itself in throughs in key and frontier infor- Last year, the output of China’s ment, which is much more accurate ment and energy generation on corporate vice-president of Baidu most conditions without a human mation technologies, including digital economy rose sharply to 35.8 than that in foreign countries, and the Yangtze River. It is responsi- and general manager of the com- driver. He noted more efforts are chipsets, core components, inde- trillion yuan ($5.3 trillion) and offers help in domestic policy-mak- ble for flood control, electricity pany’s intelligent driving group. needed to make breakthrough in pendent operating systems, high- accounted for 36.2 percent of GDP, ing on disease prevention.” generation, water navigation as He said that Baidu Apollo will con- key technologies, including infor- end database and servers,” he said.