Haier chairman sees bigger role for industrial internet sector

Visitors are introduced to COSMOPlat, Haier's industrial internet platform, at a free-trade zone in Qingdao, Shandong province, on Nov 30, 2020. The industrial internet is expected to play a bigger role in empowering the high-quality development of the digital economy and promoting regional economic transformation and upgrading, said Zhou Yunjie, chairman and CEO of Chinese home appliance giant Haier Group and a deputy to the 13th National People's Congress. In his proposal to this year's two sessions－the annual meetings of China's top legislature and political advisory body－Zhou called for increased financial support and encouragement to cities where conditions permit the building of city-level comprehensive industrial internet service platforms, and guiding leading enterprises in the industrial chain and industrial internet platform-based enterprises to jointly build vertical industry platforms. Zhou said China should build a top-tier open source community for the industrial internet with 15 cross-industry and cross-domain platforms as core members, invite more than 600 industrial internet platforms to join the community, and establish a national industrial internet open source fund. He said open source technology has expanded into traditional manufacturing and the chip sector and it is conducive to boosting the development of the industrial internet.