China has spent decades nurturing its tech sector. Now, faced with a massive public health crisis, .
The government has long stressed technological innovation as an important pillar of growth, and Beijing has spent billions of dollars on subsidies, loans and bonds designed to spur advancements in artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles and other areas as it works to develop a tech sector that can compete with Silicon Valley.
Tech is also the linchpin of Beijing's"Made in China 2025" initiative, a plan to shift the economy from manufacturing to high-tech sectors. The mandate entailed investing billions of dollars of government funding into areas such as wireless communications, microchips and robotics. And Didi, China's biggest ride-hailing provider, has teamed up with medical and aid organizations to allow workers who need to perform tasks related to data analysis, online simulation or logistical support to use Didi's servers for free."Yes, you can call them gimmicks," said Eliam Huang, an analyst at Coresight Research."But Chinese tech companies can be very responsive and versatile.
"As we learned of the situation in Wuhan, we started to pivot our resources there," Qi told CNN Business."Time has been really tight. It only took us four days to make sure our algorithm was ready to go, from simulation to practice."