‍Far away in the remote villages of China’s southwest Guizhou Province, a silent transformation is taking shape with the help of latest technology.

In the old times, students from these villages had to walk hours to reach the nearest primary school in Datang, Leishan county. Subsequently, an unreliable bus service was introduced. But now, thanks to big data and their teacher's smartphone, taking a bus is simply a matter of a few clicks.

The school bus is dispatched and monitored every step of the way from a nerve center in the county, along with a whole fleet of licensed buses, taxis and other services that was once unthinkable in this remote corner of China. 

This is made possible through a newly-launched app named Village Tour, which lives up to the vision of “big data helping the smallest communities connect” and enjoy the benefits of technology, once reserved only for cities like Beijing. Village Tour is a government-backed pilot project, which will eventually be rolled out across rural China.

Village Tour offers a secure solution for the long existing commuting problems for residents in rural area, especially for school students. Through a highly effective supply chain network, the service benefits the commuters as well as the bus companies. The transport companies are able to increase their profit by decreasing empty-load rate.

The local administration benefits from the service too as it reduces traffic accidents and the peril of unlicensed vehicles significantly, while enhancing regulatory and supervisory capacity and service quality.

While Village Tour is a showcase project of China’s rapid strides on way to its economic transition, there still remains a big gap between some of the country’s more developed regions and the lesser ones in terms of using big data and high-tech services. 

This prompts the question whether this gap is a big challenge to China’s economic transition. 

Liu Zhiqin, senior research fellow in Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University, believes that both developed and undeveloped regions are ready to be modernized.

“The only question is whether the supply side is ready to support them. We built the basic globalization and industrialization from very rural method from the very beginning. There is no reason why we can’t solve such gap. [In fact], the gap is already narrowed by our developing measures. It is necessary to transplant production lines to the lesser developed areas, to developed their economy, skills and education. This will also help in bridging the gap,” Liu told CGTN.

China is facing increasingly serious challenges from industrial overcapacity and mismatched supply and demand. Its answer is to promote supply-side structural reform.

Premier Li Keqiang says manufacturing is still the foundation for economic growth. So China has implemented the Made in China 2025 action plan. This aims to combine information technology with manufacturing technology. It also encourages the development of high-end, smart, green, and service-orientated manufacturing.

Beijing is now promoting “modern services”, meaning higher quality, specialization and higher up the value chain. In the coming decades, healthcare, education, entertainment and culture, science and research, finance, business services, and utilities are expected to lead economic growth.

(Written by CGTN's Zhang Yu, CGTN’s Nathan King also contributed to the piece)