On April 16, Oceanwide Holdings (000046, guba) announced that it signed a Strategic Cooperation Framework Agreement with Alibaba Cloud Computing Co., Ltd. The two parties reached an agreement on the building of the "Wuhan CBD Smart City" and the promotion of innovation in management and business models in the smart city.

In this February, Ma Yun, Chairman of the Board of Alibaba Group, was invited to visit and inspect the development, building and operation of the Wuhan CBD. At that time, Ma Yun praised Oceanwide Holdings for investing in the development of the Wuhan CBD as a generous and ambitious endeavor. He was very much looking forward to a modern business district that is full of cultural and artistic atmosphere and fully demonstrates the charm and vitality of Wuhan.

This is the third time that Ma Yun visited Wuhan in the past three years. He was optimistic about the development of Wuhan and bluntly stated that "Wuhan has tremendous potential for development." It was this visit that laid the ground for subsequent cooperation. The cooperation between Oceanwide Holdings and Alibaba Cloud will inject new momentum into the Wuhan CBD (310328, jijinba) and create new opportunities.

Join forces to create the Wuhan Smart City

According to the announcement, this partnership will integrate Oceanwide Holdings' resources in finance, industry and operation as well as the resources of Alibaba Cloud Computing Co., Ltd. in technology, channel, and ecosystem, and build CBD smart units and CBD smart hubs through multiple modules such as parks and buildings, real estate and new retail, health and education, and government affairs and transportation, by relying on technologies such as big data, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence.

Through the intelligentization of all the above-mentioned modules, we will create an innovative, open, smart city, and help the new city improve service quality, increase work efficiency, and reduce energy consumption, so as to form a set of new city operating innovation models.

In addition, the "IT generation difference + service" generated based on "Internet methodology + data and new technology" is used to connect the "Oceanwide e-Life" client application and set up a platform/service center, thereby empowering Oceanwide Holdings to provide its customers, members and merchants with a wide range of services, including but not limited to new retail, logistics, local life, and entrepreneurship and innovation, and jointly promoting various commercial and residential activities and the development of "entrepreneurship and innovation" ecosystems in the Wuhan CBD.

Oceanwide Holdings said that this partnership will enable the full integration of the Company's abundant accumulation in real estate with Alibaba Cloud's leading edge in information technology, promoting quality improvement and technological innovation of the Company's real estate projects, and providing customers with better intelligent experience. The Company can also take the opportunity to explore new modes of real estate business operations, and strive for more technical and resource support for real estate business transformation and upgrading.

Explore new models of city operation using the Internet

The Wuhan CBD is more than a business district, but a sound ecosystem integrating business, commerce, and residence. The core vision is to build a world-class city image. Its three core concepts of "building a new urban space, enhancing new urban values, and creating a new urban life" have been seen throughout the building of the Wuhan CBD.

Alibaba Cloud is rooted in its massive e-commerce (Taobao, Tmall) and financial (Ant Financial) services, covering millions of SME owners. It carries Ma Yun's dream of big data. Alibaba Cloud has launched the world's first one-stop big data platform—"DTplus." Over the past year or so, it has launched a number of big data-related products or services, and has continuously lowered their prices to promote the popularity of big data technology. It can be predicted that these technologies and services will make the Wuhan CBD even more powerful.

In the view of Oceanwide Holdings, implementing the dream of big data harbored by Alibaba Cloud in Wuhan is the best choice for both sides. Alibaba has a close connection with Wuhan. For example, Wuhan registers the second largest usage of Alipay in China; Wuhan is among the first cities where Alipay promotes pilot application of NFC bus riding. Alibaba Group also plans to invest in building a smart industrial community integrating entrepreneurship, work, and life around the e-commerce industry chain and cloud computing big data, by combining Wuhan's educational talent resources.

The strong alliance between Oceanwide Holdings and Alibaba Cloud will inject more momentum into the development of the Wuhan CBD, and bring more new ideas and new plays to the real estate industry, in order to seek a new model for the operation of the new city. The exploration of this new model is more like a "path finding." Once it is successful, it will provide useful experience for the future development of domestic cities.