Asian firms eye technology partnerships

Businesses in Asia are eyeing cooperation opportunities with China's tech sector as the nation accelerates technological advancement and creates new forms of smart economy, a mission underlined in the recent Government Work Report delivered by Premier Li Qiang, senior company executives and experts told China Daily at a forum held in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

Tanit Chearavanont, group chief wholesale business officer and chief commercial officer of CP Axtra, one of the largest wholesale and retail companies in Thailand, said that the company values partnership with Chinese companies because "the evolution of tech in China is so fast".

For example, he said that CP Axtra's partnership with Cainiao, the logistics arm of Chinese e-commerce and tech giant Alibaba, has made it possible to handle the delivery of 2 million parcel units per day through a digitalized supply chain, and increase the Thai firm's e-commerce penetration rate to 30 percent from just 3 percent in the past.

The chief commercial officer spoke to China Daily on the sidelines of the 6th annual Technology for Change Asia event hosted by Economist Impact, a part of The Economist Group, in Hong Kong. More than 700 industry and government leaders gathered at the forum from Wednesday to Thursday to discuss technological innovation in the region.

Norman Matthieu Vanhaecke, group CEO of Cradle Fund, an agency for developing the Malaysian startup ecosystem under the nation's Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, said that Malaysia aims to be among the world's top 20 startup ecosystems by 2030 and this makes it important for the country to work with international partners to build mutually beneficial cooperation.

He said that China's strength in artificial intelligence, combined with the young digital talent and rapidly growing markets of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, creates a complementary partnership.

"Strengthening relationships between Malaysian and Chinese tech companies is something we see as very valuable," said Vanhaecke.

Noting that China also said that it will support the development of open-source AI communities and build a vibrant open-source ecosystem, Vanhaecke said the initiatives could play a helpful role for developers across ASEAN. "When open-source ecosystems become global rather than national, they become much more powerful," he told China Daily.

Madhu Sasidhar, president and CEO of the Indian hospital chain Apollo Hospitals, said the future of precision medicine will rely heavily on AI, and that more open-source platforms will help lower the cost for everyone. He said he applauds China's efforts to open some of these technologies because it is giving tools to people who have otherwise never explored, but have the ability to innovate in healthcare.

Charles Ross, head of policy and insights for Asia-Pacific at Economist Impact, said putting a comprehensive policy in place in AI and technology will help place China in a positive position in global competition.

"We have already seen that from an AI innovation perspective, some of the companies in China … are doing really well," said Ross, noting that these companies, despite facing restrictive measures such as "chip walls", have developed innovative models with energy efficiency.

"You can only imagine these sorts of policies — which encourage broader use of AI for everybody — are really going to help (China) compete very strongly," he told China Daily.

Tanit Chearavanont from CP Axtra said his group is also working with a number of leading Chinese tech companies and is looking to partner with Chinese large language models to further enhance the Thai group's digital structure. Noting that Thai products and brands have become popular with Chinese consumers, he said the company will enter the Chinese e-commerce platform soon and he hopes that more products from the Southeast Asian country could be brought to the Chinese market.