Govt backing essential to success of 'smart cities'

China should pay more attention when building "smart" cities, which are an efficient and ecologically friendly way of spurring domestic consumption, industry researchers said on Thursday.

The "smart city" initiative, which was designed to add information technology services to urban infrastructure, will boost the nation's economy in the long run, they said.

"Only about a dozen Chinese cities have completed operable smart city plans this year, although close to 400 local governments pledged to carry out the strategy," said Gao Xinmin, vice-president of the Internet Society of China.

Governments are the major drivers of the smart city efforts globally, and China leads the rest of the world in building smart cities because of strong government support, Gao said.

But industry insiders urged local governments to provide more policy directives to related industries such as cloud computing, big data and mobile Internet.

A number of city authorities' smart city plans exist only on paper and lack supporting policies, according to Zhang Xinsheng, vice-chairman of China institute of communications.

Zhang also warned that the initiative may cause "substantial waste" if official blueprints don't meet the needs of the public.

"Smart city projects without a clear purpose are certain to be ill-fated," he said.

The central government is hoping to boost the demand in information technology-related industries in a bid to lift domestic consumption.

Large cities in developed regions are leading the charge, said the Internet Society of China's Gao.

Shanghai, Guangzhou and the Tianjin Economic-Technological Development Area are "making the most progress" in the country's smart city race, he said. Municipal services, such as transportation, healthcare and telecommunications, are the top spenders in the projects.

According to an estimate from the Ministry of Information and Technology, the total value of information consumption in China will hit 2.2 trillion yuan by the end of this year, a 27 percent jump from 2012.

The figure is on track to break 3 trillion by 2015, according to the ministry. Roughly 4.5 percent of the nation's GDP will come from the information consumption sector by then, experts say.

Cloud computing, e-commerce and Internet-based applications are among the biggest contributors of information consumption.

According to Wei Kai, an analyst at the academy of telecommunication research under MIIT, the level of government support that is offered is how cloud-computing providers and other IT startups decide what city to settle in.

"Places with more IT-related companies may have a better chance to build a well-functioning smart city," he said. "The competition over smart cities is the fight for top talent, after all."