On October 20-22, by the banks of Shanghai's Huangpu River, the 2026 Sustainable Global Leaders Conference returns once again. Nobel Prize and Turing Award winners will take the stage to discuss the future and trends of technology, and the internet-famous professor who "rescues" people from anxiety and the involution era — Macfarlane and Xiang Biao — will hold a live dialogue!
Limited seats available, first come first served. Let us embark together on this journey toward sustainability! [Click to Register] According to CCTV News on October 19, the Ministry of Commerce and eight other government departments issued opinions on accelerating technology-driven commerce. The document calls for coordinated efforts to upgrade commodity consumption quality, expand service consumption, improve circulation efficiency, and promote scenario integration and innovation. It aims to enhance the application of new technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data, the Internet of Things, cloud computing, blockchain, digital twins, and embodied intelligence, driving the intelligent, green, and integrated development of the entire commerce chain, and providing strong support for building a robust domestic market. The specific contents are as follows:
Technology Empowers Commodity Consumption Upgrading
(1) Promote iterative upgrading of commodity supply. Deeply implement the "AI + Manufacturing" special initiative, accelerate the deep integration of AI technology with product R&D, design, manufacturing, and marketing, and enrich the supply of smart products such as smartphones, computers, home appliances, wearable devices, and robots. Encourage the R&D and application of smart products based on secure and reliable open-source operating systems. Accelerate the transformation and upgrading of historical classic industries and develop classic premium products. Build a lineup of Chinese consumer premium brands and identify consumer brands featuring independent innovation and high-end quality. Vigorously develop technology-driven agriculture and promote quality improvement and efficiency enhancement of premium specialty agricultural products. Promote the preservation and innovative development of time-honored brands and support these enterprises in using modern production technologies for product innovation.
(2) Facilitate matching between commodity supply and demand. Develop flexible manufacturing, encourage enterprises to apply industrial large models, edge intelligence, and other technologies to build adaptive flexible production systems, and promote new models such as on-demand production and consumer-to-manufacturer (C2M). Vigorously develop AI-based personalized customization, cultivate a number of customization brands with industry influence, and meet personalized consumption needs.
(3) Stimulate vitality in the commodity consumption market. Leverage exhibitions such as the China International Consumer Products Expo, the Global Digital Trade Expo, and the China Agricultural Trade Fair to build platforms for showcasing, exchanging, and trading technological achievements. Cultivate segmented consumption hotspots, create consumption scenarios for new technology products, and unleash consumption potential in niche areas. Promote the extension of smart consumption facilities and services to county-level areas, improve county-level smart product service networks, and stimulate the vitality of lower-tier markets.
Technology Drives Service Consumption Expansion
(4) Improve service levels for basic needs. Innovate domestic service models, support domestic service enterprises in cooperating with technology companies, and build smart domestic service platforms. Accelerate the digital transformation of the catering industry and publish a batch of exemplary digital catering cases. Support qualified localities in exploring inclusive applications of AI technology in health management, pharmaceutical services, rehabilitation care, and other scenarios to expand the supply of quality medical and health services. Improve the quality of elderly care and childcare services, encourage qualified regions to build smart elderly care service institutions, and accelerate the development of new smart elderly care and childcare business formats.
(5) Expand supply of upgrading-type services. Upgrade the national smart education platform, open quality educational resources to society, and enrich educational service scenarios. Carry out "AI + Culture and Tourism" application pilots, promote the integrated application of AI with extended reality and other technologies, develop distinctive cultural tourism products and intelligent services, and enhance the supply of cultural tourism service consumption. Advance the "Data Elements × Sports" initiative and develop new sports consumption models such as immersive and interactive viewing experiences. Accelerate the promotion and popularization of integrated televisions, plug-in micro set-top boxes, and other convenient TV terminals to drive quantitative and qualitative growth in audiovisual electronics consumption.
(6) Optimize personalized service quality. Adhere to the principle of technology for good, and cultivate healthy and well-regulated new intelligent service formats such as robots and virtual digital human companions. Support R&D and industrialization of ultra-high-definition audiovisual technology and promote immersive audiovisual applications in commercial districts, cultural entertainment, tourism, education and training, and other fields. Use AI, digital twins, and other technologies to optimize IP R&D and design in culture, tourism, sports, national trends, historical classic industries, and other fields, promoting cross-sector integration.
Technology Unblocks the Commerce Circulation Chain
(7) Enhance supply chain integration efficiency. Implement a special initiative to accelerate the development of digital-intelligent supply chains and deepen collaborative innovation in IoT, cloud computing, blockchain, and other technologies. Promote smart stereoscopic warehouses, intelligent logistics equipment, unmanned delivery, and other facilities and equipment, and advance intelligent integration of warehousing, distribution, and transportation. Develop green supply chains and promote green technology, green procurement, green products, and green packaging. Cultivate a number of leading digital-intelligent supply chain enterprises to empower upstream and downstream SMEs.
(8) Promote digital-intelligent upgrading of wholesale and retail. Deepen the digital coordination between the wholesale industry and industry digitization, and promote the integrated online-offline development of wholesale enterprises. Accelerate the digital-intelligent transformation of agricultural product wholesale markets and improve the efficiency of agricultural product collection, distribution, and circulation. Implement the retail industry innovation and upgrading project. Encourage enterprises to apply digital technology to optimize store layout, inventory management, logistics distribution, anti-counterfeiting traceability, after-sales management, and other processes.
(9) Build a quality-oriented e-commerce ecosystem. Carry out quality e-commerce cultivation initiatives, promote the "authenticate before shipping" model, and improve platform-wide quality management. Strengthen quality standards, inspection, and brand building for online-sold goods in key areas such as home appliances, home furnishing, and electronic products. Strengthen networked verification of mandatory product certification (CCC certification) on e-commerce platforms. Advance pilot reform of CCC certification marks in key areas by adding CCC traceability QR codes.
Technology Shapes Future Commercial Scenarios
(10) Create intelligent scenarios. Cultivate new business formats for commercial intelligent agents and develop professional intelligent agents for smart shopping guides, intelligent operations, smart logistics, and more. Promote the implementation of embodied intelligence technology in the commerce sector and expand application scenarios such as home services and commercial logistics. Develop smart consumption scenarios such as cloud shopping and cloud exhibitions, and support the application of digital twin and other technologies in consumption scenarios.
(11) Expand green scenarios. Develop new green and low-carbon commercial models, support enterprises in using blockchain technology for product carbon footprint accounting, and create low-carbon product consumption scenarios. Promote the application of advanced biofuels, bio-based new materials, and biodegradable plastics, cultivate benchmark entities such as green shopping malls, green restaurants, and green logistics parks, and advance green consumption. Promote the intelligent upgrading of second-hand goods circulation and renewable resource recycling to build a green circular commercial ecosystem.
(12) Cultivate integrated scenarios. Relying on pilots for new consumption formats, new models, and new scenarios, promote the integrated application of virtual reality, digital twins, and other technologies in entertainment, tourism, health, sports, and other fields, and create a batch of new consumption scenarios integrating commerce, tourism, culture, sports, and health. Guide localities to focus on key locations such as pedestrian streets, commercial districts, and tourist attractions to build a number of consumption scenarios integrating digital and physical elements, continuously enriching diverse applications of new technologies.
Optimize the Commercial Technology Development Environment
(13) Improve the commercial technology standards system. Promote the implementation of the "Artificial Intelligence Terminal Intelligence Grading" series of national standards and accelerate the construction of a unified standards system covering various terminal forms. Implement the standardization upgrading initiative in the commerce sector. Carry out national standardization pilots in the commerce field and explore effective pathways for standardization to support innovative commercial development.
(14) Consolidate the digital-intelligent infrastructure foundation. Promote the upgrading and transformation of commercial infrastructure and accelerate the application of industrial internet and cloud computing platforms in the commerce sector. Deeply implement the AI SME entrepreneurship support plan and promote inclusive computing power to empower AI startup enterprises in the commerce sector. Establish a batch of high-quality datasets and trusted data spaces in the commerce field, and promote the integrated application and value release of commercial data and public data.
(15) Improve the safety regulatory governance system. Conduct tiered governance of commercial intelligent agents prudently and appropriately according to different application scenarios. Clarify the boundaries and norms for commercial data collection, use, and sharing, explore the publication of negative lists for data applications, and establish a data security risk monitoring and early warning system to enhance safety protection and governance capabilities. Implement inclusive and prudent regulation, allow stress testing and sandbox pilots for new technologies and new models within controllable scope, and improve the level of refined regulation.
Strengthen Support and Safeguards
(16) Strengthen technology R&D and transformation applications. Accelerate key technology R&D in new displays, smart terminals, and other fields, expand typical application scenarios and viable business models, and strengthen demonstration and promotion. Cultivate and build commercial technology application innovation centers. Focus on the consumer goods sector to cultivate a batch of technology transfer and transformation institutions, accelerating the market transformation of frontier technological achievements such as brain-computer interfaces and embodied intelligence. Support commerce enterprises in smart warehousing, digital-intelligent supply chains, and other fields in applying for specialized, refined, distinctive, and innovative enterprise status.
(17) Strengthen talent cultivation in the commerce sector. Increase efforts to cultivate interdisciplinary commercial technology talent, support regular universities, research institutes, and vocational schools in jointly building training bases and practical training platforms with commerce enterprises, support qualified regions in establishing city-level industry-education consortia oriented toward the commerce sector, and encourage leading enterprises to take the lead in forming commerce-related industry-education integration communities. Promote work-study integrated training, order-based customized training, and position-direct training. Promote the establishment of new professions (job categories) such as logistics robot application technology and intelligent system management.
(18) Increase fiscal and financial support. Coordinate the use of existing funding channels to promote the widespread application of emerging technologies in the consumption sector. Encourage financial institutions, in accordance with market-oriented and law-based principles, to increase financial support for new consumption scenarios and provide diversified financial products and services. Guide financial institutions to increase financial support for technological transformation and equipment upgrades in consumer commercial facilities to improve service quality and efficiency.
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