From 5G mobile networks to high-end chips and software, China has been striving to achieve self-reliance in vital information technologies (IT). The country has just achieved yet another breakthrough - this time in the database sector.  

Ant Financial, a subsidiary of Chinese giant Alibaba, has outstripped veteran player Oracle's rival product with its self-developed database called OceanBase to become the world's No.1 in terms of performance, according to the latest test results released by the Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC), a worldwide consortium that establishes standards for database.  

In the TPC-C benchmark test, which is known as the "World Cup" of the database sector, OceanBase broke the world record, which was maintained by Oracle for nine consecutive years, making Ant Financial the first Chinese company to top the list ever.  

Li Guojie, a professor at the Chinese Academy of Engineering specializing in computing technology, called it "a major breakthrough made by China in the area of basic software." 

The database, just like an operating system, is an important basic software for the IT industry. 

China has been developing its own database for the last four decades, but it had lagged behind international giants such as Oracle and IBM, whose products dominated the Chinese market for a long time. This not only resulted in high software service costs for Chinese companies, but also posed potential risks to information security in key areas.  

Only 10 years ago, Alibaba had to rely on Oracle for database services. But now, OceanBase has not only met its own demands to enable hundreds of millions of Chinese consumers to shop online and make mobile payments anytime they want, but it has also started to serve other domestic sectors, such as banking and insurance.