The Current Status, Situation, and Policy Suggestions for the Development of New Smart Cities in China

The concept of smart cities has attracted widespread attention internationally since its proposal in 2008, and has continued to spark a global trend of smart city development. Smart cities have become a strategic choice for promoting global urbanization, improving urban governance, addressing urban diseases, enhancing public service quality, and developing the digital economy. In recent years, China's smart cities have developed rapidly and achieved significant results. The development of smart cities in China has generally gone through four stages: the first stage is the exploration and practice period, from the proposal of the concept of smart cities at the end of 2008 to August 2014. The main feature is that various departments and regions promote the construction of smart cities according to their own understanding, which is relatively scattered and disorderly. The second stage is the regulation and adjustment period, from August 2014 to December 2015. The main feature is the establishment of the "Inter Ministerial Coordination Working Group for Promoting the Healthy Development of Smart Cities" at the national level. Each department no longer works alone, but begins to coordinate and guide the construction of local smart cities. The third stage is the strategic breakthrough period, from December 2015 to December 2017, characterized by the proposal of a new concept of smart cities and its elevation to a national strategy. Smart cities have become an important lever for the country's new urbanization, with a focus on promoting the integration and sharing of government information systems to break information silos and data segmentation. The fourth stage is the comprehensive development period, from the convening of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China to now, the main feature is the accelerated implementation of new smart city construction in various regions, and the construction achievements gradually extending to districts, counties, and rural areas. The 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China proposed the construction of a smart society, which is the sinicization and modernization of the concept of smart cities. It highlights the coordinated development of urban and rural areas and the integration of urban and rural development, and points out the development direction for deepening the construction of new smart cities. The first appearance of new smart cities in central government documents was in the 13th Five Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development released in March 2016, which proposed for the first time to "build a number of new demonstration smart cities".   The new smart city is a Chinese expression of the concept of smart city proposed to adapt to the actual situation of China's national conditions; The new smart city is a reform and innovation system engineering carried out under the conditions of modern information society, targeting the practical needs of urban economic and social development, with the core of enhancing the happiness and satisfaction of the people, to improve the intelligence of urban development mode; The new smart city is a smart city that implements the national new urbanization strategic plan, is rich in Chinese characteristics, embodies new policy mechanisms, and innovative development models; The core of the new smart city is people-oriented, and its essence is reform and innovation. Compared with the general concept of smart cities, China's new concept of smart cities places more emphasis on the following characteristics: firstly, Sinicization. The concept of smart cities in foreign countries focuses on the management of "things", mainly promoting information technology products such as the Internet of Things and cloud computing. On the other hand, the core of China's new smart city construction is centered on "people", based on the actual situation of China's "four modernizations synchronization", serving the new urbanization process centered on people, promoting the solution to the comprehensive carrying problem of "three hundred million people", and helping to improve the quality and level of China's urbanization development. The second is integration. The new smart city should focus on promoting technology integration, data integration and business integration, breaking information islands and data segmentation, opening up the "eight channels" of data sharing and integration, promoting the integration of the Internet, big data, Internet of Things, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, blockchain and other new generation information technologies with urban management services, and improving urban governance and service levels. The third is collaboration. The new smart city is not simply about the informatization of government departments and business lines within the city, but rather about the coordination of the "five organs and six viscera" of urban governance through interconnectivity, vertical and horizontal linkage, especially horizontal integration at the city level, to promote cross level, cross regional, cross system, cross departmental, and cross business collaborative management and services. It aims to transform the previously independent and independent "steady-state" information system into a "sensitive" intelligent system that responds to the whole process, all modes, and "affects the whole body", realizing the intelligence of urban governance. The fourth is innovation. The essence of a new smart city is to use the new generation of information technology to reshape and rebuild the city. It is a game between modern information technology and the inherent order and interests of the city, and to use the smooth flow and open sharing of data resources to force the unreasonable management system, governance structure, service mode, and industrial layout of the city to become more reasonable, optimized, transparent, and efficient. In this sense, any so-called smart city that is technology oriented, project driven, without business optimization, reshaping and reconstruction, reform and innovation measures, and breakthroughs in development effectiveness, is not a true new smart city. Through continuous exploration and practice, the construction of new smart cities in China continues to deepen, effectively improving the scientific, refined, and intelligent level of urban management. It has become a new concept for urban development, a new mode of urban operation, a new way of urban management, and a new mechanism for urban construction in today's era. This article combines the evaluation work of the national new smart city construction, comprehensively summarizes the development status and characteristics of China's new smart cities, deeply analyzes the bottlenecks and problems faced, and proposes corresponding policy recommendations.