Beijing plots to make fintech grand thing
Beijing has great ambitions in the fintech space to attract international firms to the city and create innovation clusters.
New clusters, new firms
According to Chinese news site Lieyunwang, the Beijing Financial Work Bureau and the Beijing Municipal Science and Technology Committee have, with the consent of the municipal government, jointly issued their “Beijing Promotion of Financial Technology Development Plan (2018-2022)”.
Lieyunwang offers up a comprehensive news report about the plan… as in a staggering 14,300 words. That includes the full text from the plan.
Let’s keep it briefer as Beijing’s main aim is to get five to ten “internationally renowned” fintech companies by the end of 2022 and create three to five innovation clusters.
For instance, the fintech innovation zone/s will be in Xicheng District and Haidian District; a banking and insurance tech cluster in Shijingshan District; a security industry cluster in Fangshan District; and a wealth management industry cluster in Tongzhou District.
There are also four general themes to the plan – and a lot of it quite vague as it has just been unveiled.
The first is to analyse opportunities and put forward development goals. Such as find talent at colleges and universities.
The second is to promote fintech. The third is spatial layout – meaning create a development pattern of “one district, one core, and multiple support”. See the districts above. The fourth is policy protection – such as implementing safeguard measures.
In terms of the areas of interest in fintech, it’s pretty much everything. These comprise artificial intelligence AI), big data, mobile, and internet of things (IoT) technology in supply chain finance and payments.
Cloud computing and blockchain aren’t forgotten, as the city wants to explore these for regulation and risk control. There is also the construction of major infrastructure – such as payment and settlement, registration and custody, credit rating, asset trading, and data management.
This fintech plan sits within a much larger “Beijing Urban Master Plan (2016-2035)”. That massive ambition according to Xinhua centres on strategic positioning, spatial distribution, historical protection, overall development of urban and rural areas, and regional collaboration.
China is very active in fintech and of course Beijing has been and will be part of the action.
As one example, Google unveiled an AI centre in the capital last year to find humans with machine learning (ML) talent.
