中国大举推进数字化

From a consumer point of view, China is already a global leader but its digitisation of industries still lags behind the US. However, China is catching up rapidly and another powerful wave of digitisation in businesses is starting to sweep through the economy, promising creative destruction in inefficient sectors on a grand scale.

从消费者的角度来看，中国已是全球领导者，但是其产业数字化程度仍落后于美国。然而，中国正在迅速赶上，另一场强劲的数字化浪潮开始在整个经济中兴起，有望大规模颠覆许多效率低下的行业。

China is well established as a digital player in consumer-facing industries with the largest ecommerce market in the world, accounting for over 40 per cent of global ecommerce transactions. Nevertheless, huge upside potential remains. China has a huge, relatively young home consumer market — and Chinese consumers are eager and willing to embrace all things digital.

在面向消费者的行业，中国的数字化已很成熟，拥有全球最大的电子商务市场，电子商务交易量占到全球的40%以上。不过，中国仍有巨大的上升空间。中国拥有庞大而相对年轻的家庭消费市场——中国消费者渴望并乐于在一切领域拥抱数字化。

Take just one example: connected cars. A McKinsey Survey of more than 3,000 respondents in China, Germany, and the United States found that 60 per cent of Chinese respondents would switch car manufacturers to obtain connectivity features, compared with only 20 per cent in Germany.

就举一个例子：联网汽车(connected-car)。麦肯锡(McKinsey)针对中国、德国和美国的3000位受访者的一份调查报告发现，60%的中国人愿意为获得联网功能而尝试新的汽车制造商，德国人的这个比例仅为20%。

Many sectors in China are ripe for digital disruption because they are fragmented and inefficient. In freight, for instance, about 95 per cent of China’s estimated 8m registered trucking companies are individuals or small companies. Less than 1 per cent of companies have 50 trucks or more in their fleets. A lack of transparent, real-time information on routing means that China’s average empty running ratio in road transport is about 40 per cent, compared with 10 to 15 per cent on average in Germany and the United States.

在中国的许多部门，数字化颠覆的时机已成熟，因为这些行业处于分散和低效的状态。例如，在货运方面，中国800万注册货运公司约有95%是个人或小公司。拥有50辆以上卡车的公司不到1%。缺乏透明、实时的路线信息意味着，中国公路运输的平均空载率约为40%，而德国和美国的这个数字为10%至15%。

China may lead the world on ecommerce but its express delivery industry has not been up to the task. About one-quarter of intercity express delivery did not meet delivery targets. Faced with demands for more efficiency and speed from China’s ecommerce giants, the industry is embracing digital technologies. Alibaba backed a new big-data platform connected to many express-delivery companies that can process 9tn lines of information per day and mobilise 1.7m drivers. The power of such digital approaches is now evident: on China’s Singles Day shopping bonanza, the number of days it takes to deliver 100m packages has fallen from nine in 2013 to only three-and-a half in 2016.

中国的电子商务也许领先世界，但是快递业却没有跟上。大约四分之一的城际快递没有完成交付目标。面对来自中国电商巨头的提高效率和速度的需求，该行业正在拥抱数字技术。阿里巴巴(Alibaba)入股了一个把许多家快递公司联接在一起的新的大数据平台，每天可以处理9万亿行信息，调配170万名司机。这种数字化手段的威力现在已显露出来：在中国的单身节(Singles Day)购物狂欢中，交付1亿个包裹所需天数从2013年的9天缩短到了2016年的仅3.5天。

Such huge efficiency gains can be achieved through digital means across industries. New McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) research finds that digitisation can potentially shift (and create) 10 to 45 per cent of industry revenue pools in China by 2030, and, in the process, vault China’s economy to new levels of global competitiveness.

如此巨大的效率提升可以通过各行各业的数字手段来实现。麦肯锡全球研究院(MGI)的最新研究发现，到2030年，数字化有潜力改变(和创造)中国10%到45%的产业收入，并在此过程中把中国经济的全球竞争力提升到新水平。

Potentially the biggest transformation could be in health care. China has made great strides since reform of the system in 2009, but it still faces considerable challenges. There is an imbalance in provision. Urban residents have two to three times better access to health-care professionals than those living in rural areas, and 51 per cent of China’s top 100 hospitals are in just three cities: Beijing, Guangzhou, and Shanghai. In such a vast country as China, the potential for internet of things and artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled health care — delivered remotely and digitally — is enormous. The government’s Internet Plus Health Care plan published early this year discussed giving patients access to their own medical data through mobile terminals.

潜在的最大转变可能发生在医疗领域。自2009年医疗体制改革以来，中国已经取得长足的进步，但仍面临相当大的挑战。医疗服务供给存在不平衡。城市居民人均医疗人员数量是农村居民的两到三倍，中国最好的100家医院有51%位于北京、广州和上海这三座城市。在中国这样一个幅员辽阔的国家，搭载物联网和人工智能(AI)技术的远程、数字化医疗拥有巨大潜力。政府今年初发布的“互联网+医疗”计划讨论了让病人能够通过移动终端访问他们自己的医疗数据。

China’s health care system today has relatively low levels of digitisation. In 2015, 29 per cent of hospitals in China had still not installed electronic medical records systems. In 2014, more than half of Chinese hospitals had not established systems for the exchange of clinical data, compared with only 6 per cent in the United States. The government has recognised that the system is ripe for a big-data revolution, introducing for the first time regulations on how big data in the health-care sectors are collected, stored and used.

当前中国医疗体系的数字化水平相对较低。2015年，中国29%的医院尚未安装电子病历系统。2014年，中国逾一半的医院还未建立临床数据交换系统，而美国的这个比例仅为6%。中国政府已认识到，在医疗体系中掀起大数据革命的时机已成熟，并首次出台了有关在医疗领域如何收集、存储和使用大数据的相关规定。

China’s internet giants are moving into health-care big data. Baidu is building Baidu Cloud with the government of Beijing, which will monitor data from wearables and devices. Alibaba has launched an e-health app called Future Hospital that connects about 200 hospitals in more than 20 provinces and 40 cities across the country; the app offers information on what hospitals have beds, and the means to make appointments, payments, and access medical records.

中国的互联网巨头正在进军医疗大数据领域。百度(Baidu)正在与北京市政府合作打造健康云，将监测来自可穿戴设备和其他智能健康设备的数据。阿里巴巴推出了名为“未来医院”的电子医疗服务，它连接至全国20多个省的40个城市的约200家医院;该服务提供医院空余床位信息，患者还可通过该服务预约挂号、缴费和查看病历。

Such innovations offer just a tiny snapshot of China’s dynamic, expanding digital ecosystem whose growth has been, to a large extent, propelled by the largest internet players.

此类创新为我们一窥中国充满活力、不断扩张的数字生态系统提供了一个狭窄的窗口。这个系统的增长，在很大程度上源自那些互联网巨头的推动。

Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent provided 42 per cent of all venture capital investment in China last year, and one in five top Chinese start-ups were founded by one of the three or their alumni (an additional 30 per cent of them receive funding from these three).

去年，百度、阿里巴巴和腾讯(Tencent)占据了中国风险投资总额的42%，中国顶级创业企业有五分之一是由这三家企业之一或它们的前员工创立的(另有30%的顶级创业企业得到了这三家企业的注资)。

Digital players also benefit from the fact that they enjoy such close links to hardware manufacturers. A sign of changing times is the fact that Shenzhen used to be known as the world center for shanzhai, or copycat products; now the city is known as China’s open innovation center. The city is home to drone manufacturer DJI, which commands more than 70 per cent of the global consumer drone market, HAX, a hardware-focused incubator that brings entrepreneurs from around the world for rapid prototyping and commercialisation, and Shenzhen Capital Group whose portfolio of more than 600 companies is increasingly internet-focused.

数字玩家们也受益于如下事实：它们与硬件制造商之间联系密切。反映当今时代瞬息万变的一个标志是：曾经被称为世界山寨中心的深圳，现在被称为中国的开放式创新中心。深圳是如下这几家公司的所在地：无人机制造商大疆创新科技(DJI)，拥有全球消费无人机市场70%以上的份额;HAX加速器，一家专注于硬件领域的孵化器，为世界各地的企业家提供快速原型设计和商品化服务;深创投(Shenzhen Capital Group)，已投资超过600家公司，并且越来越专注于互联网领域的业务。

The government is backing digital strongly. It is explicitly targeting an AI applications market of more than Rmb100bn ($15bn) value by next year, is mobilising resources to invest $180bn on building China’s 5G mobile network over the next seven years and is supporting the development of quantum technology.

政府正在大力支持数字化。它明确提出了到2020年人工智能核心产业规模超过1500亿元人民币的目标，并将调动资源实现未来七年投资1800亿美元兴建中国的5G移动网络，还将支持量子技术的发展。

This combination of enthusiastic consumers, a robust ecosystem and a supportive government has already guaranteed China increasing prominence on the global digital landscape. China’s outbound venture capital totalled $38bn in 2014-16, up from just $6bn in 2011-13, about three-quarters of which is pouring into digital related sectors. China is already in the global top three for venture-capital investment in virtual reality, autonomous vehicles, 3-D printing, robotics, drones and AI.

热情的消费者、强大的生态系统加上政府的大力支持，共同保证了中国在全球数字领域占据日益突出的地位。从2014年到2016年，中国投向海外的风险资本总额达到380亿美元——高于2011年至2013年的60亿美元——其中约四分之三的资金投入了数字相关领域。中国在虚拟现实(VR)、自动驾驶汽车、3D打印、机器人、无人机和人工智能方面的风险投资金额已进入全球三甲。

Strength at home is the anchor to China’s digital globalisation — and there is much more to come.

中国自身的实力支撑其在数字领域方面走向全球——未来还会有更多行动。

Jonathan Woetzel is a senior partner of McKinsey & Company and a director of the McKinsey Global Institute based in Shanghai.

华强森(Jonathan Woetzel)为麦肯锡(McKinsey)高级合伙人、驻上海的麦肯锡全球研究院院长