70 years of great changes | 700,000 "Ecological Guard" to protect the green waters and green mountains of Tibet

  Xinhua News Agency, Lhasa, July 13  Title: 700,000 "Ecological Guard" to protect the green waters and green mountains of Tibet

  Xinhua News Agency reporter Tian Jinwen

  The reporter learned from the Tibet Autonomous Region government that in recent years, Tibet has combined the protection and construction of ecological security barriers to increase the transfer payment of key national ecological function areas, so that the masses can fully enjoy the ecological policy dividends. According to statistics, since 2016, Tibet has provided 700,000 ecological jobs for the masses, and the masses have increased their income by nearly 4 billion yuan.

  Herdsmen lead sheep through Selinco (drone photo on April 29, 2020). Xinhua News Agency reporter Tian Jinwen

  On a mid-summer morning, in the Selinco National Nature Reserve, the wild guard Tsicheng Taqing left the house early in the morning. "This season is the season for the Tibetan antelope to give birth. I patrol around the reserve every morning to observe the wild animals and see if they need help." Tsicheng Taqing said. "The job of the wild guard is very good. It can not only contribute to the protection of the ecological environment of the hometown, but also earn a salary."

  In Shenzha County, Nagqu City, Tibet Autonomous Region, there are 42 wild guards like Cicheng Taqing, each of whom earns 3,000 yuan per month. Thanks to their efforts, the ecological environment of Selincuo National Nature Reserve is currently well maintained.

Tacheng Taqing (third from left in the first row) and fellow forest rangers (photo taken on February 14, 2021). Xinhua News Agency reporter Tian Jinwen

  This is due to the fact that Tibet relies on special project funds such as national grassland ecological protection subsidies and awards, forest ecological benefit compensation, etc., to implement the policy of assigning posts and assigning staff, assigning responsibilities and paying salaries to the poor who have the ability to work.

  In Zhaxue Township, Mozhugongka County, Lhasa City, Pu Tsering has been guarding the mountain forest for several years.

  Pu Tsering said that more than a decade ago, local people needed firewood for heating and cooking in winter, and nearby villagers used to go up the mountain to cut down trees. Not only that, but in Mozhugongka County, there are also wild animals such as black-necked cranes and red deer that migrate and live here being poached.

  Due to the large area of the reserve, Pu Tsering spent a lot of time on each patrol. When he met someone who was cutting down trees, he would patiently persuade them, and he would also carry out publicity and education on ecological protection in nearby villages. If he did not listen to the persuasion of education, he would take them back to the control station and wait for the relevant departments to come and deal with them.

  Farmers and herdsmen no longer compete with nature for food, but eat ecological protection food. By participating in public welfare forest management and protection to obtain labor income, the living conditions of some ordinary people have been substantially changed. In Zhaxue Township, where bicycles were formerly only seen, now every household has a motorcycle, and some people even drive a car.

  Nowadays, more and more farmers and herdsmen have become rangers, forest rangers, and wetland conservationists, becoming "ecological guardians" of the snowy plateau, and also achieving increased income in protecting the environment.

Original From "One Man and Horse" to "Combination of Chinese and Western" – Mazda EZ-6: The "Touchstone" of Joint Venture New Energy

If the joint venture car companies 40 years ago were to achieve "market-for-technology", then the new joint venture era is to achieve "technology-for-market" and reverse export Chinese technology, and even brands. Take Changan as an example, the EZ-6, a pure electric/range-extended new energy B-class car launched by the joint venture, provides a good research model for how the joint venture can break through in the existing market environment.

Forty years ago, China agreed to set up foreign joint ventures in China, with the fundamental focus being – market for technology, which means opening up the huge Chinese mainland market to foreign investment in order to obtain foreign car companies to help China improve its automobile development capabilities, including learning from foreign advanced manufacturing and management experience.

After 40 years, the market environment has undergone tremendous changes. Chinese car companies represented by BYD and Geely have achieved remarkable results in capital operation, supply chain vertical management, core technology development, etc., and have made rapid progress in Sandian and intelligent development. Chinese car companies have also changed from the role of "little brothers" in the past to a new force that all foreign car companies dare not underestimate, even "leaders". Auto giants such as Ford are lamenting: "They are ahead of us."

Between the above advances and retreats, on the one hand, China’s local brands have become stronger and bigger, achieving "brand spillover", on the one hand, the share of foreign brands in the country has shrunk, and the voice over has weakened, which has caused the competitiveness of joint venture car companies to decline, and led to a topic:How can joint venture car companies respond to market changes? Are they losing ground or even withdrawing from the Chinese market, or are they shrinking their front line and actively transforming?

The terrified Ford CEO

And the aggressive Mazda president

The Wall Street Journal published an article on September 14 local time, "What is Ford CEO scared of in China?", the article said that after visiting China, Ford Motor CEO Jim Farley told the company’s board members that Chinese automakers are moving at the speed of light, the artificial intelligence and other technologies used in cars are completely different from existing technologies in the United States, and these Chinese electric vehicle manufacturers that provide smooth digital functions are using low-cost supply chains to beat competitors on price and aggressively expand into overseas markets.

"In just a few short years, Chinese electric carmakers such as BYD have wrested significant domestic market share from once dominant foreign competitors through low prices, high-tech interiors and rapid iterations of vehicles. Now, the Chinese carmaker is rapidly expanding into Europe, the Middle East and other Asian markets," the article said.

After Mr. Farley and a group of Ford executives took a test drive of Changan on the test track, everyone was stunned by the technological advancements of their partner, Changan – a smooth and quiet ride with a high-end, tech-savvy and easy-to-use interior. "Jim, it’s completely different," John Lawler, Ford’s chief financial officer, told Mr. Farley after the test drive. "They’re ahead of us."

Mazda executives share the same feelings as Ford executives. Deng Zhitao, executive vice president of Changan Mazda Automobile Co., told the author: "The president of Mazda Mao Long came to China on the second day of his tenure, and this year’s Beijing Auto Show came to the scene to release the EZ-6. At the Beijing Auto Show, Mazda’s parent company sent about 200 people to conduct a comprehensive research and analysis on the competition and changes of new energy in China, which shows that Mazda’s parent company attaches unprecedented importance to the Chinese market. Without high-frequency communication, it is difficult for foreign parties to understand the changes in the Chinese market."

Deng Zhitao, Executive Vice President of Changan Mazda Automobile Co., Ltd.

Regarding the changes in awareness of the Ford and Mazda brands, Deng Zhitao, executive vice president of Changan Mazda Automobile Co., Ltd., commented:"The leadership of the Mazda brand is very determined and enlightened to transition to electrification, so embrace new things quickly. Ford is also making changes to electrification, but the speed needs to be accelerated."

Changan Mazda Model:

The "New Joint Venture Model" of Receivism

In the current context of accelerating the intelligentization of domestic automobiles, joint ventures are facing the dilemma of failure to advance and retreat. There are even opinions that under the impact of China’s local market, most joint ventures will withdraw from the Chinese market. Is there really no market outlet for joint venture car companies?

Objectively, most joint venture car companies are not fully prepared when dealing with this wave of changes, and the parent companies of Chinese and foreign parties also lack sufficient organizational resources to allow the joint venture to achieve transformation. In the fields of three power and intelligence, foreign parties do not have accumulated and technological advantages, and many Chinese investors may not have much strength. Even if the latter has technical advantages, deep cooperation cannot be realized because the two sides have not reached a sufficient consensus.

As the saying goes, it’s easy to turn around, and it’s not the big Macs like Toyota and Volkswagen, GM and Ford that are rapidly transforming and "blossoming" in this regard, but Mazda from Japan. Why? This may come from Mazda’s sense of crisis and recognition of China’s advantages.

Mazda has a deep foundation in the field of traditional car manufacturing, while Changan Automobile has been deeply cultivated in the fields of Sandian and intelligence for many years, and both have their own advantages. At the dawn of the new joint venture era, Changan Mazda, as a joint venture, gives full play to the advantageous resources given by both shareholders to achieve a strong alliance.

Deng Zhitao said: "Mazda highly recognizes the position and technology of Changan’s parent company in the field of Sandian. This time, the EZ-6 product also uses Changan’s Sandian technology and architecture in an all-round way. At the same time, Changan’s parent company also recognizes Mazda’s capabilities in design, control, quality, and safety. Therefore, during the design and development of the EZ-6, we were divided into three teams, namely Changan’s team, Mazda’s team, and Changan Mazda’s team. Each team has clear responsibilities. For example, in terms of control, design, quality and craftsmanship, it is led by the Mazda team. In terms of Sandian Intelligence, Changan’s team is responsible for the final acceptance. It can be said that the EZ-6 is a product produced under the high recognition and high compatibility of our parent companies.

It can be said that Changan Mazda’s flexible and pragmatic operating mechanism has played a huge advantage: compared with other joint venture brands, Changan Mazda is more flexible; and compared with new car manufacturers, Mazda has played an advantage in design and quality control.It can be said that Changan Mazda reflects the flexible mechanism and efficient operation of the new joint venture era, which can be understood as "Mazda’s brand advantage + Changan Automobile’s new technology empowerment"; in this way, the joint venture can not only continue to play the advantages of foreign capital in vehicle manufacturing, but also play to China’s late-mover advantages in new technologies such as intelligence, and achieve vertical integration of the supply chain, accelerate product launch, timely adjustment and optimization, and rapid iteration.

Deng Zhitao gave an example: "From the supply chain level, the EZ-6 uses many excellent domestic supply chains. For example, the EZ-6 battery originated from the Ningde era, and it is a 3C battery, including the zero-gravity seat. In the field of joint venture new energy, there are also few products that can be equipped with double zero-gravity seats, including the range-extending battery used by AVIC Plaza. The battery cells of AVIC Plaza are also fully 3C-level. In the future, OTA upgrades will continue to be carried out, adding intelligent assisted driving such as automatic off-ramp. At present, our intelligent driving system should be the latest and best research results of Changan Institute of Science and Technology."

Sample significance of EZ-6:

The "first battle" of joint venture new energy transformation

At a time when Changan and Mazda have reached a consensus to actively promote the transformation of Changan Mazda, the Chinese market has become the first choice to test the new joint venture and its products. If the market sells well and achieves initial success, then you can go overseas to participate in international competition. On the contrary, if you fail to succeed in the Chinese market and fail to return, then this new joint venture model will face severe tests and questions from the outside world: Can you do it?

When it comes to this topic, Deng Zhitao’s expression is very serious: "We believe that the Chinese market must be a very important core market for developing a global product. At present, there may be more car brands in the Chinese market than any other car market in the world. So if the Chinese market is’not good ‘, I believe it will not be able to compete in the future global market. This is what I call the’spillover’ of the Chinese auto market. The fierce competition in the Chinese market is now expanding to the global scale, and it may become more intense next year. Therefore, the spillover of competition will form a strong global effect. When we develop the EZ-6, we hope to first do a good job in the Chinese market. If the domestic market can do well, I believe we can also do well in the global competition in the future."

"We must first do a good job in the Chinese market. If the Chinese market is not good, let alone the global market. If the joint venture wants to deal with the competition of domestic independent brands in the future, the Chinese market is the bridgehead; how to compete well in the Chinese market. How to do a good job in upgrading and iterating technology is very critical for Changan Mazda," Deng Zhitao said.

Once the first battle of the EZ-6 is successful, then the process of the experience accumulated in the development process of this product will be continuously reproduced on the subsequent models of Changan Mazda. "Through the EZ-6 product, a team will be formed to precipitate a set of processes. The so-called process, I think, is the methodology in the product development process and the entire Quality Standard and acceptance system. Through the precipitation of the entire process system, in the future, on our second, third and fourth products, we will use Changan Mazda’s process to manage the development of the current product." Deng Zhitao added.

At this year’s Beijing Auto Show, the relevant person in charge of MIIT visited the Changan Mazda booth and gave a high evaluation of the MAZDA EZ-6 product. The relevant person in charge pointed out: "In the process of new energy development, you can’t build cars behind closed doors. I hope other domestic joint venture brands can learn from Changma; if the EZ-6 product can have a good performance in sales, whether it is for the development of the entire industry, the parent company of both parties, the local government, and the country, it has played a positive and exemplary role. In the past, the joint venture model was based on the market for technology, which also drove the rapid development of the automobile industry chain. It can be said that enterprises cultivate the industry chain, such as Tesla and Apple. In the future, we also hope that the domestic automotive industry chain system can also feed back the enterprise and provide better’nutrition ‘for the development of the enterprise, so as to form the’flower’ of the joint venture brand. "

From the perspective of the EZ-6 product, it reflects not only the traditional inherent value of the joint venture brand (derived from Mazda), but also the innovative value of the new joint venture era (such as range extension technology and intelligent driving technology, derived from Changan Automobile).

The biggest market opportunity for joint venture car companies to launch new energy models is that some users have both brand requirements for the product, and hope that it can match the products of their own brands in terms of electrification and intelligence. EZ-6 products have their own market opportunity points similar to "Tianji horse racing". When competing with joint venture competitors on the same stage, its performance in three electricity and intelligence will give them extra points. Compared with the same level of independent brand models, Mazda’s vehicle mechanical quality and quality sense, reliability and comparative advantages.

Users want both, and joint venture new energy products are both available. Can the two resonate at the same frequency?

Blue Power E5 PLUS official image exposed, opening a new era of family travel

Recently, the official image was heavily exposed, instantly attracting a lot of attention. Its new appearance and interior design exude a sense of high-end and quality, like a bright new star illuminating the automotive market.

The appearance of the Blue Electric E5 PLUS is very distinctive, with a minimalist futuristic design aesthetic, fashionable and atmospheric. In particular, the Aurora green body color, like a bright landscape, gives a strong visual impact and upgrades the high-end sense of the whole vehicle. For young families, such a high-value appearance is undoubtedly very attractive.

In terms of space, the Blue Electric E5 PLUS is even more outstanding. It has two seat layouts of five seats and seven seats, fully meeting the needs of different families. The effective space in the car reaches 3162mm, and the room acquisition rate is as high as 66.4%, providing a spacious and comfortable riding environment for the whole family. The seven-seat model has extremely high spatial flexibility. After the second and third rows of seats are laid down, a comfortable space with a maximum capacity of 1694L can be formed, which is as comfortable as a sun bed room.

One row of legroom of the Blue Electric E5 PLUS is 917mm, and the front soufflé seats are designed with 8 layers of comfortable stacking, which greatly enhances the thickness of the backrest and seat cushion, gives passengers better support, and brings a comfortable experience like sitting in the cloud. The second row of legroom of the five-seat model is 885mm, and the second row of seats can be adjusted backwards to 119 °, making the per capita room area higher and the ride more relaxed and comfortable. It can be said that the Blue Electric E5 PLUS has accurately grasped the travel needs of home users with its moving appearance and variety of comfortable space.

It is reported that this highly anticipated model will be available for pre-sale at the end of September, and it is believed that it will definitely bring a new quality upgrade to family travel. Let’s wait and see.

Huawei Yuntianqi deeply interprets Pangu Big Model: Let AI empower thousands of industries.

[Global Network Technology Comprehensive Report]For most people, AlphaGo defeated Li Shishi, the world’s top chess player, and AlphaMaster defeated Ke Jie in Go, which made us truly realize the arrival of the era of artificial intelligence. Subsequently, the market and industry were excited about it, and startups around the development and application of "artificial intelligence" emerged constantly, and traditional enterprises also entered the market one after another, using artificial intelligence technology to open up new market demand. In just a few years, people’s cognition of artificial intelligence has changed from "curiosity" to a normal attitude. It seems that the smoke brought by artificial intelligence has gradually dispersed, and the changes it has brought to society and industry will be forgotten over time.

I don’t know when it started, but we found that the recommendation of shopping websites is more and more in line with our wishes; The effect of taking pictures with mobile phones is getting better and better, and you can get satisfactory selfies without retouching; There seems to be less and less traffic jams on the roads of the Second and Third Ring Roads in Beijing during the morning rush hour. These scenes that we are used to, but secretly "get better", are inseparable from the support of artificial intelligence technology. As the saying goes, "moisten things quietly", just like most universal technologies, artificial intelligence is imperceptibly affecting our lives, and both academia and industry are stepping up research and development and layout of artificial intelligence technologies and applications.

In recent years, artificial intelligence is being favored by the market and society because of its ability to process huge, repetitive and complex data. Due to the universality of artificial intelligence technology and the diversity of realistic scenes, how to design a universal and easy-to-use artificial intelligence development model for different industries has become a hot spot in the field of artificial intelligence research and development. In the past two years, this field has attracted the layout of many internationally renowned technology companies including Microsoft, Google, Facebook, OpenAI and Huawei. In April this year, Tian Qi, the chief scientist in the field of Huawei cloud artificial intelligence, led the team to officially release the "Huawei Cloud Pangu Series AI Model".

Tian Qi, chief scientist in Huawei's cloud artificial intelligence field

According to Tian Qi, Huawei Cloud Pangu series AI big model (hereinafter referred to as Pangu big model) includes NLP (Chinese language) big model, CV (vision) big model, multi-modal big model and scientific computing big model, aiming at establishing a set of universal and easy-to-use artificial intelligence development models to empower more industries and developers and realize the industrial development of artificial intelligence. It has a strong generalization ability. By combining with industry knowledge, it can quickly adapt to different scenarios, and a small number of samples can also achieve high precision. Based on the industrialized AI development model of pre-training and downstream fine-tuning, it accelerates the application of AI industry and enables AI technology to truly empower different industries.

Recently, Tian Qi, the head of Huawei’s cloud Pangu model and the chief scientist in the field of Huawei’s cloud artificial intelligence, shared his deep thoughts on AI industrialization and the application of Pangu model with media reporters.

Launch a new model of industrialized AI development and build an AI ecosystem with partners.

Before joining Huawei, Tian Qi had been deeply involved in the AI field for many years: he graduated from the Department of Electronic Engineering in Tsinghua University in 1992, graduated from Drexel University in the United States in 1996 with a master’s degree, and then went to study at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the United States, where he studied under Professor Thomas S. Huang, an internationally renowned expert in computer vision, and received his doctorate. From 2002 to 2019, he served as assistant professor, associate professor and full professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

After joining Huawei in June 2018, Tian Qi became the chief scientist of computational vision in Huawei’s Noah’s Ark Lab. In March last year, he became the chief scientist of Huawei’s cloud artificial intelligence field. Thanks to many years of theoretical and practical research in the fields of computers and AI, Tian Qi has keenly discovered that artificial intelligence has entered a period of rapid development and prosperity driven by industry and capital, and at the same time, he has also seen various shortcomings of AI in large-scale commercialization. Among them, one of the biggest challenges of AI application is the fragmentation, customization and "workshop-style" development mode of AI application. Simply put, a scene needs to develop a model independently, and the whole process needs to be started from scratch and independently tuned. If the model can’t reach the expected goal, it will have to be reinvented, resulting in low development efficiency, and the development cycle often takes one month or even months. "Therefore, AI development urgently needs a new model to complete the transformation from workshop-based development to industrial development," Tian Qi said.

According to Tian Qi, the Huawei Cloud Pangu Model released in April this year is based on the industrialized AI development model of "pre-training+downstream fine-tuning", aiming at accelerating AI’s entry into thousands of industries and realizing inclusive AI. Pangu big model is based on big data pre-training and has strong generalization ability and small sample learning ability. This has achieved a breakthrough in performance and ease of use, that is, a model can be applied to a large number of complex industry scenarios, and a small number of samples can also achieve high accuracy.

Pangu big model is not an experimental model, but now it has landed in many industries and more than 100 scenes, including energy, retail, finance, industry, medical care, environment, logistics and so on. In the case of "Power Intelligent Inspection of State Grid Chongqing Yongchuan Power Supply Company", because most of the areas where Chongqing power grid is laid are hilly and mountainous areas, rivers and valleys, it is necessary to use unmanned aerial vehicles for intelligent inspection of power grid. Among them, the development of traditional intelligent inspection AI model of UAV faces two major challenges. One is how to label massive data efficiently; Second, there are hundreds of kinds of defects, which require dozens of AI recognition models, and the development cost is high. In order to solve the above problems, based on Pangu CV model, Huawei Cloud team used massive unlabeled power data for pre-training, and combined with an efficient development mode of fine-tuning a few labeled samples, put forward a pre-training model for the power industry, which skillfully solved the problem of data labeling. After the application of Pangu model, the efficiency of sample screening is improved by about 30 times, and the screening quality is improved by about 5 times. Taking Yongchuan as an example, 50,000 high-definition pictures are collected every day, and the manual marking time can be saved by 170 people/day. In terms of model universality, combined with the automatic data augmentation carried by Pangu and the optimization strategy of category adaptive loss function, one model can be adapted to hundreds of defects, and one model can replace more than 20 original small models in Yongchuan, greatly reducing the maintenance cost of the model, improving the average accuracy by 18.4% and reducing the development cost of the model by 90%.  

Helping the industry’s AI application ability to improve rapidly is the goal.

When talking about the position of Pangu big model technology in the same field, Tian Qi said that although many well-known overseas companies have devoted themselves to this track, Huawei Yunpangu big model still has its own unique advantages.

The first is technological innovation. Pangu NLP model uses Encoder-Decoder architecture for the first time, which takes into account the ability of NLP understanding and generation and leads the performance; The multi-task learning method is adopted to make the large model training more stable; Using Prompt-based, it has stronger ability in small sample learning. Pangu CV model has been extracted on demand for the first time in the industry, and the volume difference of the model extracted in different deployment scenarios can reach three orders of magnitude. Based on the comparative learning of sample similarity, the small sample learning ability is leading in the industry on ImageNet.

Followed by commercial verification. The technology developed by Huawei is producible and commercialized, and the Pangu model also integrates such genes. At the beginning of research and development, targeted development was carried out on scenes such as finance, intelligent customer service and intelligent investment research. "When we designed Pangu Big Model at the beginning, we hoped that it could get a better verification in some occasions, and hoped to drive a goal with commercial value." In Tian Qi’s view, the display of AI technical capabilities needs to be reflected in applications, and better empowering the industry’s AI application capabilities is the embodiment of the final results of Pangu Big Model.

Training AI with limited data is the current environment of AI industrialization.

When talking about his views on AI industrialization, Tian Qi said that the current AI industrialization field is in the early stage of industrial digitalization, and the application scenarios are very fragmented. Many scenarios still need customized development, and it is difficult to have a universal solution. In the face of such a dilemma, Pangu model has set a pre-training and fine-tuning method, so that the model can cover more scenes, and because the model is large enough, it has higher performance and stronger tolerance, that is, stronger generalization ability.

For example, in the financial field, industry experts need to spend a lot of energy every year to analyze corporate financial data and non-financial data, explore the means and motives of corporate financial fraud, identify corporate risks, and help corporate project audit. Due to the scarcity of industry experts, it is difficult to analyze the finances of thousands of companies in detail. In addition, due to the small sample size and extremely uneven distribution of data, traditional machine learning has been unable to accurately analyze the financial data and non-financial data of enterprises.

In order to improve the efficiency of industry analysis and reduce the manual workload, Pangu Model has trained a series of models for data differentiation, and then fused each model efficiently after training one by one. The trained Pangu model can identify 10+ major financial anomalies, 200+ minor abnormal signals, 6 types of fraudulent motives and 120+ fraudulent means.

Mental journey: from academia to business circles

As a typical representative of the transformation from academic circles to business circles, Tian Qi also shared his mental journey and views on AI with reporters. Before coming to Huawei, Tian Qi had taught in a university for 17 years, mainly studying large-scale image retrieval, pedestrian re-recognition, etc., and once achieved fruitful academic results: he became an Associate Editor; of many journals such as IEEE TMM, TCSVT, TNNLS, ACM TOMM, Multimedia Systems Journal, etc. He owns 6 American patents, has published more than 650 articles (including 181 IEEE/ACM journals and 191 CCF A conference articles) in top journals and conferences in computer vision and multimedia, such as IEEE TP AMI, IJCV, TIP, TMM, CVPR, ICCV, ECCV and ACMM, and has been cited by Google for more than 30,700 times, with an H index of 83. Eight papers have won the Best Paper Award or.

Tian Qi won the 2010 Google Facilities Research Award and the 2017 UTSA President’s Outstanding Research Award (one per year). In 2016, he was awarded the top 10 most influential scholars in the multimedia field and was awarded the IEEE Fellow. Later, he was selected as a national leading talent innovation project in 2018. Tian Qi is not only a chair professor or visiting professor at Tsinghua University Center for Neurocognitive Computing, Institute of Computing, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chinese University of Science and Technology, Zhejiang University, Shanghai Jiaotong University, Xi ‘an Jiaotong University, Nanjing University, xidian university, Dalian University of Technology, Southeast University, etc., but also a professor at the Yangtze River in the Ministry of Education, an overseas evaluation expert of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and the China Academy of Sciences. At the end of May 2021, Tian Qi was elected as an academician of the International Eurasian Academy of Sciences.

As a top expert in AI academia, coming to the industry has given Tian Qi more opportunities to combine theory with practice and improved his knowledge structure. In his view, although the academia and the industry are different, the "Tao" is interlinked and both are pursuing the development of science and technology, but the academia pays more attention to the pursuit of theoretical research, while the industry pursues practical application. At present, the academic circles advocate the combination of Industry-University-Research, with the purpose of promoting the common development of theory and practice, providing more practical cases for academic development and providing more theoretical guidance for industry.

editorial comment/noteSince the appearance of Alpha Go, the game of Go seems to have jumped out of the circle of simply pursuing victory and defeat, and turned to pursue the real "formal beauty" of Go; In the same way, the existence of artificial intelligence helps people get rid of monotonous and boring work and pursue their own real value; The application of Pangu model will also help enterprises to reduce costs and increase efficiency, so that AI will benefit thousands of industries.

Li Shufu has been building a car for 20 years from "car madman" to "dream catcher"

Compared with 10 years ago, few people now describe Li Shufu as a "car madman". This is not because he is not as "crazy" as before, but because many statements and practices that were considered crazy before have finally become a reality.

In 1997, the policy had not yet opened the floodgates for private enterprises to build cars. Li Shufu’s dream of "building cars" was an idiotic dream to the world, but he did not give up. Five years later, in 2002, Li Shufu officially obtained the policy "birth certificate" and became the first person to build a private car. In 2002, when Li Shufu said at an internal meeting that he wanted to buy Volvo, even insiders thought he was "crazy". Eight years later, he officially married the proud "Nordic Princess" despite all difficulties.

Li Shufu once dreamed of "building a car like Mercedes-Benz", but he started from scratch technically. When he first entered the business, he had to be skilled and dismantle the Mercedes-Benz car he bought for millions of dollars to learn and imitate. Later, he became the largest shareholder of Daimler Automobile Group.

According to the first half financial report released by Geely Automobile Holdings Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Geely Automobile", 0175.HK) on August 22, the operating income of Geely Automobile in the first half of 2018 reached 53.71 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 36%; The net profit attributable to the parent company was 6.67 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 54%, making it the most profitable car company for its own brand.

At the same time, Geely Automobile sold 767,000 vehicles in the first half of the year, up 44% year-on-year, becoming the top three brands in the domestic market.

When he first entered the business, Li Shufu said that his biggest dream was to "let China cars travel all over the world, not let the cars of the world travel all over China". Everyone thinks that this is simply a distant fantasy. But at present, Geely Automobile has begun to enter ASEAN countries, and plans to enter mainstream markets such as Europe and the United States in the next step.

I’m not a car maniac.

Li Shufu’s classic sentence of "a car is just four wheels and a sofa" is widely known in the industry. At that time, this sentence caused a lot of criticism. Many years later, people are still willing to "bring up the past" to remember the past and talk about the leap-forward changes of Geely Automobile in the past 20 years.

But Li Shufu himself doesn’t like to mention this sentence very much. He has explained the background and reasons for saying this sentence on many occasions, and stressed that it is not appropriate to simply understand this sentence as "Li Shufu thinks building a car is very simple".

Before entering the automobile industry, he started his business five times, and the first bucket of gold in his life came from taking pictures of people. The older generation of Taizhou people still vaguely remember such a picture. In 1982, in Li Jiacun, luqiao district, Taizhou, Zhejiang Province, a boy wearing a straw hat was often seen on a worn-out bicycle. He walked around the streets to take pictures of others to make money, and promised not to like it or ask for money. At that time, when the monthly salary was no more than 50 yuan, Li Shufu earned 2,000 yuan a year, and he soon opened a photo studio with the money he earned. This was his first venture. That year, he was only 20 years old.

In the great wave of reform and opening up, Li Shufu boldly tried various market opportunities. From photo studio to refrigerator manufacturing, decorating materials and producing motorcycles. With a keen market sense and a down-to-earth attitude, Li Shufu can succeed almost every time he enters an industry. In 1989, the output value of his refrigerator factory has exceeded tens of millions of yuan. The output reaches 600 to 1000 units a day, and there are long queues of foreign trucks pulling goods. But the swarming imitators made him feel helpless and forced to move to a new industry.

Later, Li Shufu set his sights on the car. At that time, private enterprises have not been approved to enter the field of car making, and the players in the market are all state-owned enterprises. Cars are far from entering ordinary families. A Santana with a price of more than 200,000 yuan still needs to find a relationship to buy. But "in the United States, one year’s salary can buy two cars. In China, we can’t buy a car for ten years’ salary, so this car can’t be popularized. Li Shufu thought that if a car of about 50,000 yuan can be built, there must be a huge market space. At the same time, "I think automobile is a highly comprehensive and complicated business, and people can’t easily enter this industry and destroy the whole pattern". These two factors determined him to devote himself to the automobile industry.

Li Shufu, who was not yet in the water, was not very clear at that time how high the barriers in the automobile industry were and how big the challenges were. But like the previous five ventures, once he thought of it, he began to act. Some people laughed at him, and a private enterprise actually came to build a car. Li Shufu was unconvinced: "Isn’t a car just four wheels and a sofa?" When this was said, people even thought it was a joke. The name "car madman" spread slowly.

But he doesn’t care about the outside world’s views. "I study very hard, watch the news broadcast every day, see what Obama is saying, and see how the automobile industry changes every day." Later, he said more than once that the timing for Geely to enter the automobile industry is the best, "not one year earlier, not one year later". Facts have proved that this is also the case. After Geely, the market also experienced a "car-making fever" of private enterprises. Oaks, Midea and other enterprises all entered the automobile industry across the border, but they all failed.

Please give me a chance to fail.

Li Shufu was born with a flexible mind, and he couldn’t build it himself. He started with imitation and "built" the first Geely pride car by hammer and hand. What really makes him feel the pressure is that there is no "birth certificate". Li Shufu saved the country by curve, and finally successfully acquired a bus manufacturing enterprise in Deyang, Sichuan, and produced it with the acquired bus qualification.

Strictly speaking, this is not in line with the specification. Geely’s development can’t always rely on the edge of the ball. At that time, Li Shufu’s investment in the automobile industry had reached more than one billion. He joked that he had "put his life and life on the line", but he had no choice but to wait on how to get the production qualification. In 2001, China’s automobile industry policy changed from catalog management to announcement management. Li Shufu quickly reported the improved models of two new cars of Geely to the relevant state departments, hoping to enter the new issue of Announcement of Vehicle Manufacturers and Products.

He was full of expectations for the loosening of the policy, but the result disappointed him again. "When someone told Li Shufu that Geely was excluded from the catalogue on the day when the Announcement was published, he didn’t even have the courage to pick up the newspaper that published the Announcement himself," wrote a report in China Entrepreneur that year. But he still didn’t want to give up. At that time, a company in Zhejiang Province wanted to buy Geely, and the two sides talked back and forth several times. In the end, Li Shufu did not sell it. "Geely is someone who wants to buy it, but I will not give it. I would rather fail and I will not sell it." "Please give me a chance to fail," he said to Zeng Peiyan, then director of the State Planning Commission, who came to inspect. This sentence is still widely circulated today.

Wu Xiaobo, a financial writer, talks about the biggest difference between a businessman and an entrepreneur. He thinks that "being good at discovering and tapping market opportunities, acting according to the situation, pursuing profits, and carefully calculating risks and benefits" is a necessary condition for a successful businessman, while entrepreneurs will concentrate more on a certain cause, persevere, and sometimes even do whatever it takes.

It sounds like Li Shufu had some "entrepreneur" potential at that time. In people’s eyes, Li Shufu, a "car madman", began to gradually transition from that arrogant layman to a very persistent and fanatical "dream catcher".

Geely finally got the production qualification on the eve of China’s entry into WTO, and Li Shufu was overjoyed. However, people at that time were pessimistic about the prospect of Geely building cars.

Liu Chuanzhi, founder of Lenovo Group, said when he participated in the CCTV program: "I think Li Shufu has not got cheese now, but he has only got the right to look for cheese." He added that having the right to look for it and being able to get it are two different things, and it’s really not possible that there may be eighteen layers of hell behind it.

More than ten years later, in 2017, Geely acquired the equity of Daimler Group and became the largest shareholder of the other party. Liu Chuanzhi, who was worried about his future at that time, felt that Li Shufu bought Volvo and became a major shareholder of Mercedes-Benz, which was "a shame for the parents of China enterprises".

According to Liu Chuanzhi’s standards, in just 20 years’ pioneering course, Li Shufu’s face for the parents of China enterprises is far more than buying Volvo and taking shares in Mercedes-Benz. Starting from zero, it took only 20 years, and Geely’s annual sales volume has exceeded 1.2 million vehicles, with sales approaching 300 billion yuan, making it the first private company. Through overseas mergers and acquisitions and cooperation, Geely has owned many brands such as Geely, Volvo, Link, Taxi to London, Proton and Lotus. There are four core R&D institutions in the world, with more than 10,000 R&D personnel. Besides having production bases in Britain and Malaysia, there are also ATLAS factories in Belarus, and the products have been sold in ASEAN and Russia, and will enter the European market in 2020.

Not long ago, Fortune Global 500 was released. Among the six China car companies on the list, Geely is not only the only private enterprise, but also the one with the highest profit rate. On Forbes’ list of the world’s richest people, Li Shufu became the richest man in China’s automobile industry.

Many people want to know, what is the secret of Li Shufu’s success? In a sharing activity held by Geely in November 2013, Li Shufu summed up his years of experience as 24 words of "truth": "pursuing ideals, grasping business opportunities, persisting in faith, not afraid of failure, making decisions with heart, and gathering strength" as the secret of his success.

So, can you replicate success by knowing the secret? After Geely completed the acquisition of Volvo, a reporter asked Li Shufu a similar question, and he replied: How to copy it? There is only one Volvo and only one Geely.

Because of love, "snake swallows elephant"

Although overseas mergers and acquisitions are nothing new in the automobile industry, successful cases are rare. It is rare that there are successful mergers and acquisitions, and then they can be as successful as Volvo today in the process of operation.

When Geely acquired Volvo, the latter sold only 370,000 vehicles worldwide, and by this year, Volvo’s global sales are expected to exceed 600,000 vehicles. Under Ford, Volvo faced huge losses in 2008. After being acquired by Geely, Volvo achieved the best performance in history in the first half of this year, with an operating profit of SEK 7.8 billion, or about RMB 5.9 billion. In fact, before the acquisition of Volvo, Geely also acquired Australia’s DSI automatic transmission company and completed the acquisition of London taxi company, but these two mergers and acquisitions did not bring an immediate leap to Geely’s development, and the attention aroused in the industry was far less than that of the acquisition of Volvo.

Geely’s acquisition of Volvo attracted wide attention, not only because it was the biggest overseas acquisition of China car companies at that time, but also because it reflected Geely’s forbearance and persistence in defying all difficulties, as well as Li Shufu’s keen sense of smell and management wisdom with oriental philosophy.

In 2002, Geely just got the qualification of car production. Li Shufu first talked about wanting to buy Volvo at an internal meeting. At that time, Yang Jian, An Conghui and other senior executives attending the meeting were shocked. Although Volvo was "committed" to Ford at that time, Volvo enjoyed the same brand reputation as BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Audi all over the world throughout the 20th century. Geely, a little-known China enterprise, wants to buy a world-famous luxury brand, which is tantamount to a fable.

But Li Shufu asserted at that time that both GM and Ford would go bankrupt, and Ford would eventually choose to sell Volvo. The "wild talk" that was recognized at that time was fulfilled one by one a few years later. Li Shufu was ready when Ford planned to slim down and began to find buyers for its assets including Volvo under the strategy of "one Ford".

Since 2007, Geely has started internal transformation in order to gain more points in the process of merger and acquisition. At first, Ford didn’t pay attention to this pursuer whose strength was far from Volvo, but Li Shufu was not discouraged, and went to the door again and again, and finally gained the goodwill and trust of the other party. Although it was recognized by Ford, at that time, Volvo employees and trade unions were still full of distrust about whether Geely, a China enterprise with little influence in the international market, could lead Volvo to the bright future.

At the end of the acquisition preparation, Li Shufu met with the trade union for the first time. A trade union representative asked him in slightly hostile words, can you explain why you want to buy Volvo in one sentence? Li Shufu said loudly: "I love you!" At that time, I won the favor of the other party. Later, when Li Shufu was interviewed by CCTV, the host asked him, was this answer prepared before? Li Shufu replied: "I have always thought so."

Li Shufu loved Volvo so much that he cried when the merger marathon, which lasted for several years, finally came to an end. On March 28, 2010, in London, England, he bowed his head and signed the documents half a meter high on the table one by one. He lay motionless on the table. After a long time, when it was time to connect with Hangzhou Geely headquarters, Li Shufu looked up. Yin Daqing, then CFO of Geely Holding Group, found that Li Shufu’s tears fell like broken beads.

At the beginning of 2010, when Geely’s acquisition of Volvo entered the most difficult negotiation stage, Li Shufu said in an interview with China Entrepreneur: "If I can choose again, I would like to choose a more free career: journalist, lawyer, poet, writer, painter and singer."

Li Shufu had a special hobby in his early years — — Write poems and lyrics. He once wrote: "People are on a journey, who knows how many roads there are ahead, and the ups and downs have long been left in the depths of memory. The sunshine and starlight guide me in the morning and evening, and hope is not far away in spring, summer, autumn and winter. Don’t bow your head, don’t admit defeat, dry your tears and stick to it. I will suffer the pain, and I know the way to go. " This passage was later set to music and sung by the singer Chen Lin.

"release the tiger to the mountain"

At that time, some people described this transnational merger as "snake swallowing elephant", but Li Shufu disagreed: "A snake is a snake, and an elephant is an elephant. A snake can never swallow an elephant." He doesn’t want to describe the relationship between Geely and Volvo with father and son, but chooses appropriate "alienation". Geely is Geely and Volvo is Volvo.

In a speech after purchasing Volvo, he said: "Under the new ownership framework, we need scientific management, and the best way is to put Volvo ‘ Release the tiger to the mountain ’ 。” Anders gustafson, then general manager of Volvo Car Sweden, was deeply impressed by this sentence, which was not only vivid, but more importantly, "this kind of words can’t be said by western entrepreneurs". He felt that Li Shufu talked more about philosophy than business. "He is a businessman with internal driving force, not limited to making money."

Although at that time, Li Shufu and Volvo’s management had differences in product positioning and other fields, Li Shufu still followed his promise. "I just want the general direction to be right." He said more than once, "They (Volvo’s management team) know more than me. If they don’t know how to pretend to know, it’s dangerous." In an interview with the outside world, he also mentioned many times, "Volvo is a big tree. We don’t want to move it. We just water it and loosen the soil."

Li Shufu’s humility and equality in dealing with Volvo, the acquired brand, and the good development of the latter completely dispelled Volvo’s "defense" and wait-and-see attitude towards Geely, and the cooperation between the two sides also entered the deep water area. Shortly after Geely’s acquisition of Volvo, Geely established the European R&D Center (CEVT) in Gothenburg, where Volvo’s Swedish headquarters is located, to jointly develop the CMA modular platform architecture for Geely’s upcoming brand Link and Volvo.

Li Shufu’s thinking is very simple. Cars are an industry that wins by scale. Volvo has many very advanced technologies that Geely can use, and Geely can bring advantages to Volvo in terms of cost control and localized procurement. In addition, the two can also cooperate in production capacity, such as Volvo’s European factory, and the next step will be to produce new cars for Geely Link to help Geely enter the European market.

Li Shufu has a strong sense of crisis and cooperation. At the same time, he has childlike interests and fantasies. He seems to be interested in every forward-looking automobile technology, such as autonomous driving and flying cars. Earlier, Geely announced the formal acquisition of the American flying car company. Li Shufu stated that he wanted to make "the dream of cars flying in the sky come true". At that time, some people laughed at him, but now Geely announced that its flying cars will be listed in 2019. He said that he wanted to build a car that was not available in the world. "You sit here, the car will come automatically; When you say go home, the car will automatically take you back … …”

He has predicted many times on different occasions that there may be only two or three traditional car companies left in the future. Geely wants to be not only a survivor, but also a great company. Whether it is the acquisition of Volvo, or Proton and its shareholding in Volvo Group and Daimler, the starting point is win-win cooperation. "In fact, we are under great pressure now, which is even greater than before. The automobile industry is undergoing changes, and what changes this change will bring to the automobile industry is still unknown. " He said. Therefore, Geely hopes to accelerate its pace in the field of new technologies and business models through the mode of "integrating Lian Heng".

"It is impossible to have a great car company in such a huge market as China." Lin Jie, vice president of Geely Group and general manager of the sales company, said that this has always been the view of the chairman (Li Shufu). His dream is that Geely will become such a great car company, not only hoping to enter the same camp with Volkswagen and Toyota in sales volume, but also becoming a "respected enterprise".

After 20 years in the business, with the tempering and tempering on the road of chasing dreams, Li Shufu has continuously gathered his edge and become more and more low-key. After purchasing Volvo, Swedish culture changed him. In an interview with CCTV, he said: "No matter how rich they are, they travel in economy class, and I don’t fly in business class now."

Wu Xiaobo once described Li Shufu like this: "His low-key, humble, and even a little polite and shy once gave me the illusion that I had met a ‘ Fake Li Shufu ’ . At the beginning, in the eyes of the media, it was a bit arrogant, paranoid, and even ‘ Acting talent ’ The car madman has disappeared; Standing in front of you is an automobile expert who talks about automobile manufacturing and can talk about Kan Kan from safety technology, green energy saving to car networking and intelligence. "

On the way from grassroots to international entrepreneurs, Li Shufu slowly cultivated. The era of "car madman" has passed. At present, he is keeping a low profile on the road of "dreaming".