Executive Summary

China has been impacted by a number of global trends, including the current global financial crisis, globalization, energy geopolitics and global warming. A top priority for China’s leadership is to keep economic growth at around 8% in order to keep unemployment rates low. At the same time, China needs to fix certain fundamental problems in the economy which have been exemplified under the financial crisis, as these will be critical to the survival of Chinese companies. Meanwhile, the financial crisis also presents Chinese companies with new opportunities to expand or invest overseas and to become global leaders in their industries.

China’s short term priorities and long term development goals will be centered around five themes, namely, sustainable economic development, competitive enterprises, harmonious society, energy efficiency and environmental protection. These themes are reflected in the Chinese Government’s RMB 4 trillion economic stimulus package, the 2005-2010 11th Five Year Plan as well as a number of policy goals around job creation, healthcare reform, food, product and drinking water safety.

Success depends on how China responds. Traditional piecemeal economic stimulus measures will revive the economy but can neither resolve the underlying inefficiencies in the economy nor capture the broader transformational opportunity. Instead, China needs a new, smarter approach that not only “repairs” problems but also “prepares” China to become a global leader in the post recession world. The smarter approach involves investment not only in physical infrastructure but also technologically advanced infrastructure and talent, to create higher skill, higher value impact jobs and new, highly competitive industries to achieve sustainability in the economy as well as the environment.

A smarter approach involves leveraging a new generation of information technologies which are instrumented, interconnected and intelligent. Through this, we can achieve the smarter planet vision of transforming the way every person, business, organization, government, natural system, and man-made system interacts to become much smarter, i.e., better clarity, efficiency, flexibility and responsiveness, which will open up meaningful new possibilities for progress.

Our vision in the transformation in six areas of the Chinese economy – power grid, healthcare, city governance and administration, traffic, supply chain and banking – illustrates how the smarter planet concept benefits government, enterprises and citizens.

China should capture this historical milestone and leverage the smarter planet model immediately to make real change in order to leapfrog to the next level of development and become global leaders. The road to a smarter planet requires the participation and collaboration of every government, company and individual to build the vision, contribute their industry/domain specific knowledge and develop the relevant technology applications. Above all, it requires all the participating parties to execute with commitment, courage and innovation.

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