Beijing regards the domestic and international technical standardization campaign as a key component of the strategy to grow the country economically and expand its geostrategic power. In numerous speeches delivered by Xi Jinping between 2014 and 2016, it is stated that China can only be a leading nation if it becomes an international decision maker and standards are the "first chess move" of global expansion
On April 27, 2024, the "Forum on 6G Innovation and Development" was held in Zhongguancun, China.
The event was hosted by the Beijing Municipal Science and Technology Commission, Zhongguancun Administrative Committee, Haidian District People's Government of Beijing Municipality, and co-sponsored by Zhongguancun Pan-Union Research Institute for Mobile Technology Innovation and Application (hereinafter referred to as Zhongguancun Pan-Union Institute), China Mobile Research Institute, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, and TD Industry Alliance.
Photo/VCG
The following issues were discussed at the forum:
the latest news on 6G standardization work;
China's role in unifying global 6G standards;
the development of the next generation of communication technologies;
the difference between generative artificial intelligence and traditional artificial intelligence and how AI can help 6G applications;
the status of 6G progress and to what extent this technology will affect human life.
By about 2030, 6G will be commercially available in areas where infrastructure conditions are met, including China.
"The international standards organization 3GPP has formally established the roadmap for the development of 6G standards and plans to start 6G standardization work in the second half of this year, marking the fact that 6G is moving from concept to reality and from dream to practice." Dai Xiaohui, vice president and secretary-general of the China Communications Standards Association (CCSA), added that in October this year, the 3GPP General Assembly will be held in China to discuss 6G standards, with more than 1,000 foreign delegates and 1,000 domestic delegates. "Our delegates can participate more in the conference to learn about 6G and provide innovative 6G technologies," pointed out Dai Xiaohui.
The development of 6G technology is a global undertaking, Dai Xiaohui pointed out, which requires China to work hand in hand with other countries around the world to formulate a globally unified 6G standard and cooperate to promote the industrialization process of 6G technology.
Gao Tongqing, a member of the party group and deputy general manager of China Mobile Communications Corporation, also presented an initiative in his speech: we should adhere to open cooperation and promote the unification of global standards. He said that in the industry, the GTI, the international industrial cooperation platform led by China Mobile, is currently one of the largest international organizations in the world and is "the largest international organization led by China." It is important to play a good role in the GTI and maintain the openness and inclusiveness of the industrial organization.
The direction of development of the new generation of communication technologies
In his speech "Intelligent Simplicity: The Soul of the New Generation of Communication Technologies", Zhang Ping, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and president of the Zhongguancun Joint Institute, said that the goal of communication systems is to develop in the direction of simplicity. "3G, 4G and 5G are bigger and bigger, they are more complex and actually perform more and more functions. However, it has been continuously simplified from the point of view of the entropy of the system, but now they want to keep the simplicity at the root and we need to do it in the direction of 'intelligence.'”
6G Ultra-Scale MIMO cloud radio network prototyping system presented at "6G Innovation and Development Forum." Photo Observer.
In his opinion, 6G is indeed timely and has presented important visions and technical indicators. Once the new features of the IMT-2030 (6G) are proposed, they should be implemented according to different scenarios. Any technology that attempts to satisfy all scenarios is unlikely to succeed because it costs too much and moves further and further away from being 'smart' in simplicity."
Zhang Ping said there are several bottlenecks limiting the development of the industry, such as capacity, energy, spectrum resources, chip costs and so on. He warned that the current computer system is developing in the direction of increasing entropy, which is very dangerous, because "all human beings do is to reduce entropy, reduce entropy to move from disorder to order."
Regarding the future development of the communications industry, Zhang Ping proposed to continue to promote research on basic theories, further optimize design criteria, and take the path of independent innovation. He pointed out that "there are not many things in China that have gone from 0 to 1 at the moment, and most of them are made by others." Although the manufacturing capabilities are strong, the most basic parts need to be strengthened. “Professionals must maintain their strategic focus of innovation and cannot give up after others say it won't work,” he added.
Zhang Ping also said that the key to establishing a systematic and controlled development system in China and building a sustainable and green ecology in concert with the world is to reason with the world. "Everyone listens to reason, and if reason holds, you can turn the world around."
The difference between generative artificial intelligence and traditional artificial intelligence and how AI can help 6G applications
During the talk "Generative Artificial Intelligence Enabling 6G Core Technologies and Applications," Shuguang Cui, a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Sciences and an academic of the Canadian Academy of Engineering, explained that the biggest difference between generative AI and traditional AI lies in the fact that traditional AI focuses mainly on pattern recognition, while generative AI, as the name suggests, focuses on pattern generation.
Generative AI has three main characteristics: first, it is able to learn complex data distributions, much better than traditional AI. Second, it is able to transform data between very high and very low dimensions. This aspect is closely related to communication, involving source, channel, encoding and decoding. Third, it is able to improve the quality of data.
Regarding how generative artificial intelligence can help anticipate the era of 6G applications, Shuguang Cui focused on applications in electromagnetic spectrum mapping. "Traditional communication technologies are statistical signal-to-noise models; in the future, as computing technology improves, we can think about using AI technology to create digital channel twins in real time to support channel planning of communication applications. The real-time three-dimensional spectrum map involves a number of fields, such as drone path planning; if the frequency planning is not good, it is very chaotic." he said.
Cui Shuguang said that "in order to establish a high-dimensional real-time spectrum map, it is first necessary to have a digital presentation and understanding of the real physical world, the surrounding physical environment for three-dimensional reconstruction, followed by a digital segmentation analysis to distinguish between the types of material objects, which is very necessary information for spectrum ray tracing."
Since the main model is generative artificial intelligence, Shuguang Cui also proposed a new name for speech communication based on a knowledge base similar to ChatGPT, "Generative Speech Communication Architecture." He added that "the whole architecture can be divided into two parts: first the learning and understanding of data, such as deep learning of understanding nature images, and then the generation of synthesized images in the context of nature images."
For the comprehension part and the generation part of the grand model, Shuguang Cui also proposed the "concept of comprehension sub-base and generation sub-base. "It is conceivable that the understanding sub-base is used on the transmitter side and the generation sub-base is used for data retrieval on the receiver side." He imagines that "if a ChatGPT-like database were distributed to all senders and receivers, it would be entirely possible for people to transmit very small amounts of code as encoding when sending large files." "GPT generates an image by describing only a few points and providing a simple prompt. In the future, when people send data, instead of having to send an image, they can simply encode these few points and pass them to the receiver end, which will then use the large pattern sub-base generated for retrieval," Shuguang Cui pointed out.
Regarding how generative AI can support 6G application scenarios, Shuguang Cui talked about the meta-universe. He said that although there are many scenarios for the meta-universe, he is still optimistic about the industrial meta-universe.
Cui Shuguang presented a case study, "My students love clothing design and want to create a clothing meta-universe in the field of clothing design and production." In this regard, he mentioned that "current generative AI has been able to reach the level of human designers in the field of clothing design, but while human designers can take months to design a style, AI takes only seconds. If the customer is not satisfied with the designed style, they can even change it in real time by communicating with the large model."
"In combination with 6G technology, digital apparel design can be combined with the entire digital intelligent production chain to truly realize the killer application of 6G." Cui Shuguang said that "currently, the entire apparel process from design to production to sale is still long, but the idea of the apparel meta-universe can subvert the entire chain so that any style of apparel can complete the entire process from design to release in a few days. This is the kind of breakthrough that 6G can bring."
How is 6G an improvement over 5G?
In the report "Building a 6G Smart Network Base, Winning an Open and Diverse Future," Huang Yuhong, executive vice president of Zhongguancun Pan-Union Academy and president of the China Mobile Research Institute, said that 6G has expanded the "capability triangle" of 5G into a "hexagonal shape," which not only has higher speeds, but also more connections, low latency, low cost and high quality. "Not only higher speeds, more connections, low latency, high reliability, but 6G also added three new capabilities, namely air and space as one, communication and sensing as one, and communication and computation and intelligence as one," Huang Yuhong said.
Huang Yuhong cited the example of drones: "Drones will transmit data, not only the commercial flow of visual collection data, but also the control class of data, the need for the network to provide communications for its large bandwidth, and also the control class needs low latency and high reliability. Drones are mainly used for target identification, which requires intelligent capabilities and the ability to detect its location. In addition, a large amount of collected data must be transmitted to perform calculations, model twins, and so on. Therefore, common-sense arithmetic intelligence capabilities are critical for the low-altitude economy, and a 6G-oriented infrastructure can make these capabilities readily available to customers."
"We want to create an arithmetic-intelligent common-sense fusion, which means these capabilities are natively together, rather than a chimney-type structure for users," Huang Yuhong said. "Chimney-type structures, that is, 'communication is communication, perception is perception, artificial intelligence is artificial intelligence,' for the customer are neither cheap nor more difficult to access."
The last speaker, Reinaldo Valenzuela, Fellow of Nokia Bell Labs and member of the American Academy of Engineering, gave an online presentation, "6G Vision and Technology." According to his presentation, in 6G networks, communications in 2030 will focus primarily on an important area of human augmentation, namely human intelligence and human control of the environment through multi-node mixed reality telepresence and high-definition mapping.
"6G will offer us a whole new way of life and a pervasive real-time computing presence on a large scale, both in the digital and physical worlds. It will simultaneously have a lasting impact on our knowledge systems and human-computer interaction. Through integration, it will transcend physical and biological environments to reproduce multi-node mixed reality scenarios that fulfill our desires in any way, anywhere, anytime."
Expand geostrategic power through control of national and international technical standardization
For years, Beijing has been making significant efforts to shape global standards in emerging technologies, particularly in 5G, artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things. Their technical definition and control are important at the geostrategic level.
Standards defined by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), the private nonprofit organization that sets industry standards in the U.S., for example, make many economic exchanges possible and influence 96 percent of global trade.
The standards of the International Telecommunication Union (UN ITU), the standards-setting organization in telecommunications and the use of radio waves, on the other hand, enable the use of telephone, satellite and Internet communications.
The technical specifications of emerging technology are (or will be) determined by the ICT standards that will shape the future industrial revolution of information technology.
The nations that establish and provide these standards become owners of intellectual property (IP), as well as the formation, development and control of related supply chains; which generates additional strategic capabilities in accessing and controlling large systems.
From this point of view, China has created a considerable lead in 5G that is significantly composed of software. Because ICT networks and backbones are dependent on these tools, Beijing has gained the ability to control countries' access to the technology, equipment and services on which consumers, industry and national security depend.
"The 'China Standards' also constitute the essential technical connective tissue for the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the Digital Silk Road (DSR). They also enable the expansion of control over global information and communication technology (ICT). Combined with standard military-civilian fusion (MCF) requirements, these strategies pave the way for China to project its military power."
"Beijing regards the domestic and international technical standardization campaign as a key component of the strategy to grow the country economically and expand its geostrategic power. In numerous speeches delivered by Xi Jinping between 2014 and 2016, it is stated that China can only be a leading nation if it becomes an international decision maker and standards are the "first chess move" of global expansion."
Xi also added that the CCP would need to strengthen its "leadership on standardization work" and the "sharp power of Chinese standards."
In addition, China has set its sights on becoming an "information superpower," and governance has shifted from being focused, primarily, inward to a more active, outward projection. In practice, Beijing would now like to shape the global Internet as well.
To achieve these goals, Beijing has developed internally a complex of interconnected cyber security strategies, laws, measures, regulations, and standards, which it calls cyber governance. Externally, however, it has used diplomatic efforts to expand the concept of cyber sovereignty in international organizations and forums.
As described by Xi Jinping at the 2015 World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, cyber sovereignty means "respecting the right of each country to choose its own Internet development path, its own Internet management model and its own Internet public policies." And this position evidently contrasts with that asserted by liberal democracies that cyberspace should remain a global and open platform.
Beijing's multilateral efforts, says expert Adam Segal, are supported by the Belt and Road Initiative and other instruments of trade diplomacy, as well as the global activities of Chinese technology companies. The result of all this will be a less open and less free Internet. "Beijing will strengthen the capabilities of other states seeking to block the flow of information and increase control over their populations. In addition, intelligence and cyber-offensive gains will flow into China with the widespread adoption of Chinese technologies and standards. Chinese intelligence and military agencies will certainly seek to exploit familiarity with Chinese technology and standards to gain an advantage in the domestic arena," Segal said.
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