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A moderately prosperous society, or xiaokang, has more
implications than just the increase of people's incomes. It also means
people in such a society have access to more facilities and products
that can make their lives happier and more convenient, officials said. Ling Yun, mayor of Hefei, capital of Anhui province, said development
of the high-tech industry will be increasingly important in efforts to
improve society there. As many resources have been put into the
industry, Hefei is gradually becoming a hub for emerging technologies,
including artificial intelligence. Hefei is home to iFlytek, the country's leading AI company that is best known for its voice recognition technology. To date, its open-access platform has served more than 1.42 million
entrepreneurs and third-party developers who use the AI and speech
recognition technologies to do business, according to the company. The firm is a big creator that can spur on smaller creators. Since 2013, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and
the Anhui provincial government have been developing China Speech
Valley, a high-tech industrial park, into a major hub for the AI
industry. Living up to its name, in the valley, the human voice bears new
technological fruit that can be consumed in people's daily lives. The
products span from robots used for different purposes and computer
mouses with convenient speech input function－for Mandarin, English and
even some Chinese dialects－to various smart, wearable devices. "Intelligent voice interaction only comprises a small part of AI, but
it can play a key role in displaying the achievement of scientific
research for the public," said Mao Yuanyuan, vice-president of China
Speech Valley. In 2017, the provincial and municipal governments set up a fund with
over 5 billion yuan ($732 million) for Hefei's long-term development.
From 2017 to this year, the Hefei government has annually allocated 600
million yuan to further develop the park. By June, 910 enterprises were operating in the valley. The total
output value of the park last year reached 80 billion yuan, according to
Mao, who is also the administrator of the valley. "We've formed a dynamic model to incubate and encourage the growth of
enterprises, going through the whole process from the birth of an idea
to the manufacturing of products," Mao said."The University of Science
and Technology of China and some institutes of the Chinese Academy of
Sciences based in Hefei have offered fruitful achievements for our
creativity." Thanks to developed online channels, despite the impact from
COVID-19, the total output value of the valley in the first six months
of this year reached 45 billion yuan, and Mao said she expected the
total value to surpass 100 billion by the end of the year, with over
1,000 enterprises stationed there. Huami, a leading tech company that is based in the park and develops
wearable devices, serves as an example. Despite initial setbacks earlier
this year, shipments made by the company, which is listed on the New
York Stock Exchange, quickly rebounded in the second quarter of this
year. Over 8.9 million devices were shipped－about half domestically and the
other half abroad－in the second quarter, a 7.2 percent increase from
the same period last year. In addition, its revenue in the second
quarter was nearly 1.14 billion yuan, up 9.5 percent compared with the
same period in 2019. As the coronavirus pandemic continues, China Speech Valley is not
only surviving, it is thriving and contributing to the fight against the
disease. Infervision, a company that develops medical-related AI technology in
the park, created an auxiliary diagnosis system and equipped dozens of
hospitals nationwide with it to aid the fight against COVID-19. It later
exported the system to multiple countries, helping medical workers to
confirm over 300,000 cases. "Speaking of a prosperous life, it must give people a sense of gain,
and these products can make people directly feel that life is getting
better," Mao said.
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