FUZHOU, May 1 (Xinhua) -- Visitors explored Beijing's Forbidden City through VR or tried AI health consultations, while nearby, tech experts debated token pricing and data sandbox security. This scene took place at the ninth Digital China Summit in east China's Fujian Province, where digital infrastructure meets everyday applications.

The event, held on Wednesday and Thursday, featured over 50 sub-forums and dialogues, with enterprise-hosted sessions accounting for more than 55 percent. More than 6,000 technologies, products and projects from over 400 exhibitors were showcased, including Tencent's Hy3 preview model and iFlytek's AI glasses.

"The summit brought together the market entities of AI's three pillars -- data, computing power and algorithms. I saw cutting-edge technologies and diverse solutions from my peers," said a marketing director at Sugon, an AI infrastructure firm.

At Sugon's booth, a server unit consisting of two computing cabinets, each with 640 AI accelerator cards in a world-first design, attracted large crowds. This cabinet improves AI model training and inference performance by 30 percent to 40 percent, with over 96 percent of electricity used for computation and less than 4 percent lost as heat.

Behind this cabinet unit, which integrates so much cutting-edge technology, lies deep collaboration across chip design, high-speed interconnects, cooling, software, and manufacturing.

For years, software-hardware incompatibilities hampered efficiency. To address this issue, a number of companies and research institutes in computing power industrial chain formed a cooperation organization. It now brings together around 6,000 supply chain partners, having completed more than 15,000 compatibility tests from chips to industrial applications. Common insights gained from these tests can be shared with ecosystem partners to accelerate innovation.

During the summit, Sugon's supercomputing cluster capable of 60,000 AI accelerator cards was connected to China's integrated computing-power network. The network integrates and coordinates computing power between regions with rich energy resources and large data demand across the country, enabling small- and medium-sized enterprises and research institutions to access cutting-edge computing power at lower cost.

"China's rapid digital economic growth is driven by vast application scenarios from its large market, long-term digital infrastructure investment, and institutional reforms in data circulation," said Zhu Jialiang, an assistant professor at Xiamen University.

Fuzhou, the host city of the summit, has launched a Data Switching Service Network (DSSN), or an "Internet of Data," under the central government's guidelines on accelerating the development and utilization of public data resources. As of April 2026, the platform links more than 900 data entities across 17 application scenarios, spanning textile supply chains, deep-sea AI aquaculture, and pharmaceutical R&D.

Data security is the prerequisite for data circulation. For instance, hospitals and research institutes are often unwilling to share raw medical data with drug developers. To address this, Fuzhou's DSSN has built a trusted system where data is anonymized and stripped of sensitive information while staying on local nodes. Instead of moving the data, the platform moves the AI algorithm to the data -- integrating lab, clinical, and drug development information for model training without exposing raw medical records. All operations are audited for compliance.

The benefit of data circulation is significant: new drug development cycles have been shortened by two-thirds, R&D costs have fallen by 70 percent, and scientific translation efficiency has seen a marked improvement.

As China's digital market expands both in terms of technology and data circulation, this trend is extending to cooperation with ASEAN, its largest trading partner.

At a major Malaysian egg producer's facility, a poultry inspection robot developed in Fuzhou is at work. Using AI vision and sound recognition, it inspects 50,000 laying hens in three hours.

In April, a Chinese medical team in southwestern Sichuan Province, together with their Thai counterparts, performed a remote gallbladder surgery on a patient in Thailand using a Chinese robotic system.

"China-ASEAN digital cooperation is application-oriented, focused on tangible, practical, and efficient scenarios. The cooperation has moved beyond equipment exports to integrated partnerships covering platforms, systems and talent training -- from products to complete solutions," said Zhu of Xiamen University.

As cross-border trade and investment grow more intertwined, high-quality data circulation has become increasingly needed. A cross-border credit reporting platform, set up by China-ASEAN Information Harbor Co., Ltd, now covers more than 575 million enterprises, including over 7 million ASEAN companies, and has provided 147.6 million credit report inquiries.

"The platform was a great help in opening our cross-border RMB account," said a representative of Guangxi Pingshang International Trade Co., Ltd., a goods and technology trading firm. Previously, banks struggled to verify its overseas shareholder background. With the platform, the local bank quickly verified the credit information and approved the account and credit support.

"Our next steps include setting up AI demonstration centers in Vietnam and Indonesia, rolling out industry-specific AI models for healthcare and education, developing localized AI tools, and building data exchange platforms in Vietnam, Laos, and Indonesia to support compliant cross-border data flows," said Gan Qiuling, executive president of China-ASEAN Information Harbor Co., Ltd.

"There are a lot of opportunities for collaboration with China, with ASEAN, and with the rest of the world," said John Tay, chief strategy officer of the Malaysia Internet of Things Association, during the summit.

"We are no longer building isolated solutions but connected ecosystems and cross-border collaboration," he added. ■