Editor's note: China's Ministry of Transport hosted the Global Sustainable Transport Summit in Beijing on September 25-26, expounding on the importance of intelligent transportation and logistics. Li Hongchang, researcher at the Sustainable Transport Innovation Center, writes about how smart transportation serves as the latest new model for high-quality development of the transportation industry. The following article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

The development of intelligent transportation and intelligent logistics, especially technologies such as big data, the internet, AI, and blockchain, have profoundly changed the "material-information relationship" in the field of transportation and logistics; that is, the relationship between transport and logistics entities and information technology. 

Information technology has increasingly become a leading and driving factor of production. Using digital technology, digital assets and digital elements is crucial in the implementation methods to shift the infrastructure, operation organization, transaction efficiency, and policy system in the field of transportation and logistics. Based on this, China's Ministry of Transport has accelerated new infrastructure construction in the transport sector to advance its digitalization and AI application. Take the online freight platform as an example, with the continuous development of the online freight platform, the vehicle-cargo matching time in China has been shortened from two to three days to six to eight hours, the average mileage driven per month has been increased by 50 percent, and the average monthly income of drivers has increased by roughly 30 percent, benefiting 15 million heavy truck drivers.

Up to now, more than 3,500 kilometers of highways in China have completed intelligent upgrading. A number of intelligent highways have been completed and put into operation, such as the Hebei section of Jingxiong Expressway, Shanghai-Hangzhou-Ningbo Expressway, Hangzhou Round-City Double-Route, Chengyi Expressway, and so forth. In China, transportation construction is actively integrated with new digital technology, and information infrastructure such as BeiDou and 5G is being further implemented. At present, the coverage of electronic waterway maps of high-grade waterways in China is more than 70 percent, more than 20 automatic container terminals have been built or are under construction, and more than 10 million road transport and urban passenger vehicles using BeiDou terminals have been installed. The application rate of the BeiDou system in critical areas is more than 95 percent. According to estimates, China's network freight logistics platform saved 40 billion yuan ($5.5 billion) in transaction costs.

Intelligent transportation and logistics in China have achieved remarkable results, benefiting people's lives and advancing economic and social development. Looking into the future, China's intelligent transport logistics also needs to further improve the level of market-oriented operation in passenger transport, and promote the transformation of new industry types such as driverless taxis. The country will further advance the standardized development of intelligent green freight distribution and network freight platforms, and improve the supporting policy supervision mechanism to promote a healthy and orderly development of China's intelligent transport logistics.