China to build more pilot smart cities

China will soon have more pilot smart cities, a Ministry of Science and Technology official said on Thursday as Fuzhou, in Fujian province, and Digital China Holdings Ltd launched the nation's first smart city service platform accessible to residents.

"Accelerating the development of smart cities can boost China's economic and IT growth. We are currently selecting cities to pilot the implementation of our research results. Fuzhou, the first pilot city for this kind of service, provides a good example for other cities to learn from," said Zhao Yuhai, director of the High-Tech Division of the Ministry of Science and Technology.

Until now, residents did not know when government bureaus finished processing their applications for permits and documents. Through the development smart city development, they will be able to access that information through electronic devices, said Guo Wei, chairman of Digital China.

D.C. Chien, general manager and chief executive of IBM Greater China Group, said that the smart city project is increasingly important as cities continue to grow.

"We have predicted that by 2015, 70 percent of the world's population will be in cities, and in the next 15 years, 300 million people will move to cities," Chien said.

He also mentioned that a better city can attract better talent, to help China's industry transformation from the labor-intensive model to the value-added model.

The new industry will generate a trillion-yuan-market in the near future. More than 400 cities will be involved in the development of smart cities by the end of this year, Xinhua reported in September.