Every fortnight we compile a list of important news updates and events covering the Chinese FINTECH, MFGTECH, CLNTECH, and AGRTECH sectors.

For a downloadable copy of China’s Issue #34

FINTECH

In 2020, mobile banking transactions will increase by 30% year on year
In 2020, the number of off-counter transactions of banking financial institutions reached 370.872 billion, which increased by 15 percent year on year. Total amount of off-counter transactions reached 2,308 trillion CNY, which increased by 12 percent year on year. The industry average distribution rate of electronic channels is 90 percent. Mobile banking transactions reached 191 billion, which increased by 58 percent year on year. Total amount of transactions reached 439.24 trillion CNY, which increased by 30 percent year on year.

Visa and Allinpay announced a strategic partnership
Allinpay has officially become the first Visa Token Service provider in China. The cooperation will enhance the Visa cross-border payment technology service capability of Allinay, provide payment solutions for Chinese cross-border export e-commerce merchants and improve the efficiency and security of Visa cardholders’ payments to online merchants.
Dongxing Wang is the GM of Alipay Digital Life PMO

Beijing National Fintech Certification Center was established
Beijing National Fintech Certification Center Co., Ltd. is invested and established by the People’s Bank of China. In the past two years, the People’s bank of China has set up several fintech subsidiaries, including Chengfang Fintech Co., Ltd. and Zhonghui Fintech (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd.

Internet life insurance premiums increased by 13.6 percent year on year in 2020
In 2020, the scale premium of Internet personal insurance business reached 211.08 billion yuan, with a year-on-year growth of 13.6%. Life insurance is still the main insurance, accounting for 55.6%. Annuity insurance accounted for 23.2%, becoming the second largest type of insurance. Health insurance accounted for 17.8 percent of the total, and its share in Internet life insurance continued to grow.

Kunlun, Baidu’s AI chip unit, has raised a new round of funding
Kunlun has closed a new round of funding, led by Citic Industries, at a valuation of $2 billion.
Yongming Xu is Senior Director at Baidu

Huaun completed tens of millions CNY of A round financing
Huaun, a company that focus on vulnerability management and AI attack and defense manufacturers, completed tens of millions of CNY A round of financing. The investor of this round of financing is DCM, a famous venture capital institution. Crypto Capital acts as the exclusive financial adviser. After this round of financing, the company will continue to improve its technical strength and product capabilities, and accelerate the application of artificial intelligence in network security.

Ant Group has the highest number of blockchain patent applications
The authoritative international intellectual property magazine IAM has conducted a comprehensive analysis of blockchain-related quality indicators of Chinese companies and highlighted the dominant position of Chinese companies in blockchain patent applications. Ant Group is outstanding in terms of authorized patents, coverage and citation rate, with the highest overall score.
Alan Wang is the GM at Ant Financial

China’s first B2B platform digital RMB settlement was completed in Dalian
Two fuel oil trading companies in Dalian completed a fuel oil transaction settlement business on Hailian Mall, a digital platform for shipping industry, through digital RMB (E-CNY) payment. This is China’s first digital RMB application in B2B platform and settlement between enterprises.

Luohu District of Shenzhen plans to focus on the development of blockchain financial technology
Luohu District of Shenzhen plans to accelerate the cultivation and development of emerging financial formats. They will support the development of emerging forms of financial technology such as online credit investigation, technology insurance and digital finance, focus on the development of blockchain financial technology, carry out digital currency research and mobile payment and other new applications.

Baidu Brain has opened more than 270 AI capabilities to the public
Baidu Brain has opened up more than 270 AI capabilities to the public, with the daily volume of calls exceeding 1 trillion times, serving the intelligent upgrading of thousands of industries. FeioPar is the first deep learning framework independently developed in China.
Yongming Xu is Senior Director at Baidu

AGRTECH

New Hope Group will build intelligent pig farm
New Hope Group will build the largest intelligent pig breeding base in Beijing. The base set up temperature measuring robot to monitor the temperature of pigs. The automatic clustering system can accurately fed the pigs according to the weight of pigs. Feed conveying and feeding and other processes all depends on intelligent equipment. After harmless treatment, pig excreta become biogas slurry, which can be used to improve soil composition and protect local ecological environment.
Jeff Yu is the General Manager at New Hope Group

State Power Investment Corporation’s first intelligent plant factory has been put into trial production
The project is a hydroponic vegetable plant factory with artificial light source. The high-precision environmental control system set in the plant factory can realize the continuous production of vegetables throughout the year. The intelligent computer and electronic sensing system are used to automatically control the environmental conditions of plant growth, such as temperature, humidity, illumination, CO2 concentration and nutrient solution, so that the growth and development of vegetables in plant factories are not restricted by the external natural conditions

Hunan’s first smart agriculture demonstration base started construction
The base will develop a smart agricultural model suitable for Hunan’s agricultural industry environment. The construction of the base will be carried out in three steps. The first step is to build a digital rice research base to create a standard system for digital rice cultivation. The second step is to establish a digital center to realize scientific planting decisions driven by big data. The last step was to popularize cultivated land in Yuanjiang city.

Jinhua has released a smart agricultural service system
The system is jointly launched by Jinhua Agriculture and Rural Affairs Bureau and Jinhua Branch of Agricultural Bank of China. Optimize and integrate agro-related service of various departments around the four steps, which are planting, management, harvesting and marketing, in the whole planting cycle in the field. Realize checklist management, one-stop management and integrated services. Farmers and government managers can log into the system through the WeChat public account of “One Thing in the Field”.