Jiangxi conference a boon for virtual reality industry

The 2020 World Conference on the Virtual Reality Industry, held from Oct 19 to 20 in Nanchang, Jiangxi province, has become an important event for VR in China and an impetus into the sector's sustainable development, local officials said.

The two-day event is being held in an online and offline model this year, featuring new scenes such as virtual hosting, augmented reality special effects, live broadcasting, guest holographic speeches, and intelligent simultaneous interpretation.

It focuses on extended reality, cloud VR, industrial ecology and entertainment.

A total of 167 key projects were sorted out this year, with investment of about 120 billion yuan ($17.85 billion).

Co-hosted by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the provincial government of Jiangxi, the conference is held annually in Nanchang. During the 2019 conference, 104 VR industry agreements were inked for projects.

China has seen its VR industry mature and expand as the country pushes for high-quality development and extensive application of new technologies.

According to the MIIT, China's VR market will be valued at 54.45 billion yuan by 2021.

Huang Xizhong, mayor of Nanchang, said the city aims to seize opportunities amid the new round of global technological revolution and industrial transformation, promotes the integration and development of VR, 5G, artificial intelligence, big data and cloud computing, and strives to attract global VR companies, projects, talented people and funding.

Nanchang has welcomed a number of tech giants in the past two years, such as Microsoft, Huawei, and Alibaba. The city has also cultivated high-profile local companies.

From January to September, the city's revenue from VR-related industries reached 12 billion yuan, exceeding all of last year.

"By holding the conference, Nanchang has issued a series of favorable policies to boost the VR industry and optimize the business environment," Huang said.

Ren Aiguang, deputy director of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's electronic information department, said VR is a key part of the technological revolution and will profoundly change the production and lifestyle of human beings.

Ren said 5G commercialization has accelerated the application of VR technologies into live broadcasts, computer games, education and medical care.

Since the beginning of this year, VR has played an active role in the prevention and control of the COVID-19 epidemic as well as the resumption of work and production, he said.

"VR education, VR office, remote inspection and other new scenarios have changed the way people learn and work, improving the efficiency of information sharing. VR viewings, VR tourism and other new formats have allowed offline business to go online, bringing a new service experience to customers. VR has become an important driver of intelligent transformation and will grow into a huge industrial space," Ren added.

"The conference focuses not only on building off the previous two conferences, but also reflects new thinking on the relationship between VR and the new development pattern," said Wu Zhongqiong, vice-governor of Jiangxi.

"We focus on seeking breakthroughs in the word 'new'," Wu said. "For the first time, we adopted the online-based and offline-integrated cloud summit model, and set up a branch venue in Austria."

"We will make good use of the brand effect of the VR conference. We have more than 300 VR companies in the province," Huang added.

"The related output value has grown from 4.2 billion yuan in 2018 to 12 billion yuan in 2019, and it is expected to exceed 20 billion yuan this year."