At the 2017 China Industrialization and Informatization Integration Conference, heads of government and major technology companies such as Tencent discussed the development of the manufacturing industry in China and the way of transformation in the future. In the next 20 years to change from “Made in China” to “Created in China” in the next 20 years, Ma HuaTeng (Pony Ma) said China’s manufacturing industry needs to be strongly connected to the internet. And the key to success lies in China’s ability to build an intelligent platform and innovation-ecological circle based on software, hardware and service. 

Combined with Tencent's internet experience and practice, Pony believed that “Internet + Manufacturing” needed three important foundations: one is connectivity, the other is a cloud platform, and the third is security.

Firstly, connectivity means breaking through the "information island" in the traditional manufacturing industry and creating a more user-centric industrial Internet with more connections.

As Pony Ma said, “Internet innovation benefits from our ability to connect and interact with the users. We also hope that the manufacturers can learn user demand through dynamic perception and organise research and development, manufacturing and service, and realise the intelligent production with the strength of the endogenous power itself.”

The effective link between producers and consumers depends on the combination of the online-offline channels and the integration of information networks, distribution networks and supply chains. This is a system project that requires collaboration between government, the manufacturing industry, Internet companies, and a large number of the third-party service providers.

Currently, Tencent is focusing on the connecting people and is planning to realise the connections between people, equipment and the services in the future. Hopefully, as Mr. Ma mentioned, they are also working to provide their connectivity capabilities so that manufacturing companies can reach a large number of consumers and stimulate the development of the industrial internet in China.

Second, Tencent has built the industrial cloud platform with its partners. Their “Foot-Cloud” project worked with Three-One Heavy Industry is a good start. In this project, the Three-One connects its 300,000 devices around the world with the cloud platform, in which they can collect almost 10 thousand data in the real-time.

With cloud computing and data in the near future, industries can remotely monitor the status of their equipment, fix bugs early, and release inventory pressures. 

Third is the security. An important concern for the manufacturing industry for the realisation of digital transformation is security, especially the industrial information security.

For information security, Tencent has set up seven security labs internally to explore the various areas of the security, including the Internet of Things.

As an Internet company, Tencent intends to continue to act as the "connector", working with its partners to break through the manufacturing information island and share the internet experience with entrepreneurs by providing a cloud platform infrastructure. 

Pony said, “Security is Tencent’s life-line”. After managing massive data safely and consistently over the past 20 years, and having accumulated substantial experience and technology, Tencent wanted to give manufacturers as much of the opportunity as possible to realise the digital transformation.