Smart city investment set to top 2 trillion yuan by 2025

The accumulated investment in China's "smart city" effort is on track to exceed 2 trillion yuan ($322 billion) by 2025, fueled by a massive State-sponsored urbanization project, an industry report found on Wednesday.

China has the most ambitious digital-powered urbanization plan on the planet, but it should also be cautious of possible "resource waste" during the process, analysts warned.

The country's gross domestic product will be five times bigger than today's in 10 years, and more than 4 million jobs will be added because of smart city-related projects, said the white paper co-authored by IBM Corp and research firm IDC.

"The new forms of urbanization, with the help of emerging technologies such as mobile Internet and cloud computing, are the foundation of the nation's economic development," said Wu Lianfeng, associate vice-president of IDC China.

About 300 million Chinese will move from rural areas to the cities over the next decade, pushing the urban population to 1 billion by 2025, according to the IBM/IDC report.

The number of cities with more than 1 million residents will be 220 by then. There are only 35 cities in Europe on a similar scale, it said.

Heavy pressure has been put on city infrastructure, including transportation, healthcare, power supply and social security, as people pour into urban areas.

"The government has to rely on technology to solve most of the city problems," said Wu. He added that a cross-industry information-sharing platform based on cloud technology could help city managers to better allocate resources and provide services.

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