An exhibition booth for iFlyTek at the 2020 China Brand Forum, held by People's Daily on December 8, 2020 Photo: People's Daily

The 2020 China Brand Forum, organized by People's Daily, was held in Beijing on Tuesday, with more than 300 representatives from ministries, enterprises and research institutes. Technology innovation by the enterprises has supported industry upgrading, green development, and poverty alleviation in China, according to representatives.

Ji Bingxuan, vice-chairperson of the Standing Committee of the 13th National People's Congress, said on Tuesday that China has to focus on the real economy, the lifeblood of a country's economy, including all kinds of enterprises, especially manufacturing enterprises.

"The trend of globalization is irreversible. Only by following the trend of opening-up and cooperation can we achieve more development opportunities and greater space for development," Ji added.

In recent years, there have been more and more Chinese brands in the Fortune Global 500. Statistics show that China accounts for 408 of the world's top 5,000 leading brands, with a total value of $1.6 trillion, among which nine brands ranked in the top 25 in the world.

"The transformation of made-in-China to Chinese creation and Chinese brands is accelerating," said Gan Shaoning, deputy director of the China National Intellectual Property Administration.

Tuo Zhen, president of People's Daily, also agreed that the development environment for Chinese brands has improved in recent years, with increasing variety and quality.

Representatives of the enterprises demonstrated their progress by showing products developed with advanced technology.

CRRC Corp has rolled out a series of new trains this year. Its 600-kilometer-per-hour maglev train had a successful trial run in June and the first train will roll off the production line soon, according to CRRC Chairman Liu Hualong. 

Another new type of high-speed train released in October, with a standard speed of 400 kilometers per hour, has been developed to run in different rail systems, making international rail travel more convenient.

"IFlyTek has been producing C-terminal products since 2014. With its AI advantages, iFlyTek has not only made continuous breakthroughs in voice recognition products but has also made innovations in education products. For example, a learning machine can intelligently analyze the weak points of students' knowledge and automatically provide exercises related to knowledge points," a staffer of iFlyTek, who showed some of the latest products from the company at an exhibition booth outside the venue of the forum, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

According to its vice president, iFlyTek has served more than 1 million people online during the COVID-19 epidemic, providing real-time voice-text transfer and translation using AI technology.

Another area seeing rapid growth in China is 5G technology. According to the general manager of China Mobile, one of the main telecommunication service providers in China, the company has provided 5G services in areas such as medical treatment, messaging, cloud office, smart factories and smart ports.

Chinese brands have also been active in promoting industrial upgrading. 

Qianxun Holdings, a leading multi-channel network firm known for livestreaming anchor Viya, shared its story of supporting poverty alleviation through e-commerce upgrading.

Dong Haifeng, chairman of Qianxun, said that selling Dangshan pears was one example.

"At the very beginning, our company tried to sell the famous Dangshan pear via livestreaming, but found that the immature cold chain would cause after-sales problems. So we suggested fruit farmers could make the pears into a pear paste, which is easier to transport and keep fresh. The pear paste was later put on sale and 20,000 units were sold out in seconds via live streaming; they have continued to be a hot item," said Dong. 

The pear paste business also promoted the rise of local warehousing logistics, color printing and packaging industries. In less than a year, more than 100,000 jobs were indirectly created and 13,000 fruit farmers escaped poverty. 

Global Times