China's experience and global vision for people-centered smart cities

Every year on October 31, World Cities Day brings global attention to the challenges and opportunities of urbanization. This year's theme is "people-centered smart cities," focusing on how digital technologies can better serve residents' needs.

China's ongoing push to build "smart cities" offers insight into how digital governance, data platforms and infrastructure integration can support safer, more efficient and more livable urban futures. At the national level, the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025) explicitly sets goals for accelerating the digital economy, expanding information network infrastructure and developing a national big-data center system.

In parallel, the concept of a new-type "smart city" has been promoted by the Ministry of Housing and Urban‑Rural Development, for example, through evaluation index systems and integration of urban information modeling (CIM) platforms.

At the city level, there are many notable examples. Beijing has built an integrated City Operation Management Center, linking real-time data from transport, utilities and emergency systems. According to the Beijing Municipal Government, this platform supports precise traffic dispatching, rapid emergency response and coordinated public-service delivery. The city has also advanced digital public health services through unified electronic medical records and AI-assisted diagnostics, while smart energy grids in areas such as Beijing Daxing International Airport improve efficiency and reduce carbon emissions.

In Hangzhou, the "City Brain" platform developed by the tech sector uses AI and real-time data to manage traffic flow, emergency response and urban operations, helping reduce congestion and streamline services.

In Shenzhen, studies highlight the city's evolution into a smart city testbed with integrated IoT, cloud-based infrastructure and industrial applications.

These and other city cases illustrate the practical translation of national policy into urban innovation.

On the international front, China has exported smart-city technologies and platforms under its Belt and Road Initiative, and Chinese firms have been active in smart-city projects overseas, seeking to advance technical standards and interoperability globally. Standardization efforts co-led or influenced by China are shaping the global smart-city agenda and the data governance frameworks that underlie it.

As cities worldwide observe World Cities Day, China's experience offers a lens on how digital infrastructure and governance might be harnessed to meet urban challenges. The focus is not simply on technology, but on how it serves the residents and strengthens the link between innovation and inclusion, a fitting complement to this year's international agenda.