The fourth session of the 14th Tianjin Municipal Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference opened on Jan 24. The metropolis's political advisors came together to discuss local economic and social development over the past year, and to make plans for the year to come.

This hugely important session is particularly significant this year as it is the first year of the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25), which marks the beginning of a new journey towards a modern socialist metropolis. In addition, the meeting also sought to discuss work on the 2035 long-term development goal.

Improving production efficiency through the development of the intelligent technology industry and accelerating the intelligentization of the manufacturing industry have become key ways to optimize and upgrade the structure of the economy. They are also pivotal to the city's positioning as a national advanced manufacturing R&D base, and to its high-quality economic development.

The 30 proposals the committee made last year concerning the development of smart technology and a smart port, and promoting the level of regional intelligence levels, have yielded good progress in terms of the construction of a smart city.

Changes have been made to help with the attraction of top talent, the easy financing of technology companies, the building of an AI technology appliances demo center, and with 5G infrastructure to bolster industrial upgrading.

"As a front-line scientific and technological worker in the field of intelligence, I have truly felt the benefits brought about by high-quality economic growth, allowing me to see the government's plan to build a national first-class smart technology innovation ecosystem," said Qi Juntong, chairman of Yifei Intelligent Control (Tianjin) Technology Co., Ltd. "Their actions made me more confident in inviting my colleagues, experts, and upstream and downstream enterprises to the fertile soil of Tianjin's smart industry.”