A flight carrying a full cabin of goods from Italy's Milan landed in Xi'an City of northwest China's Shaanxi Province on Tuesday, marking growing bilateral trade and economic ties between the two cities thanks to a recently launched air route.
At 14:00 on Tuesday, China Eastern Airlines' flight MU5014 landed at the Xi'an Xianyang International Airport, carrying 11,520 kilograms of cargo mainly consisting of high-quality large equipment parts.
Since its launch on September 26, the Xi'an-Milan route has been an active part of the Belt and Road Initiative, not only providing more convenient travel options for passengers between the two cities but also playing an important role in cargo transportation. Since the route's inauguration, 12 outbound flights have been operated, transporting a total of 117,560 kilograms of cargo to Milan.
According to Zhang Xuan, deputy general manager of the Market Department at Xi'an Xianyang International Airport, this route is the second intercontinental route launched from Xi'an this year.
"In the future, Xi'an (Xianyang International) Airport will continue to expand its network towards Central Asia, Central and Eastern Europe, and Western Europe," Zhang said.
Today, with the addition of large return shipments, this route has become an even more important link between China and Europe. The transport of return goods, such as equipment parts, are expected to further strengthen economic exchanges and cooperation between both sides.
For European businesses, the vast potential of the Chinese market offers more development opportunities, while for relevant regions in China, high-quality European products will help boost local industrial upgrades and development.
New air route facilitates booming cargo transport between Xi'an, Milan
China is at the forefront of financial technological innovations that include mobile payment and artificial intelligence (AI), according to industry watchers at the SWIFT International Banker's Operation Seminar, or Sibos, in Beijing.
The four-day Sibos 2024 financial conference concluded on Thursday.
The theme of this year's conference was "Connecting the Future of Finance," with discussion that focused on the digital transformations shaping the industry.
Experts in attendance said China is at the forefront of adopting certain areas of fintech innovations such as mobile payment.
"I think the estimate is that in the next few years, the domestic mobile payment will already exceed 100 trillion U.S. dollars in the next few years," said David Chan, managing director and partner of Boston Consulting Group.
Another area of focus is called embedded finance, which integrates financial services directly into non-financial platforms or applications, such as shopping and travel apps.
The approach allows businesses to seamlessly offer services like payments, loans, insurance and investment options within their existing user experiences.
Most of the services leverage insights from collected customer data to provide tailored financial solutions.
"Also leveraging on the data to do better risk management so that they can actually allow more SMEs, more underbanked populations to be able to access funding," said Chan.
China is also leading in the research and adoption of generative AI, including chatbots that use large language models, or LLMs, to simulate real human communication.
"Even the foundational LLM is at the developing stage, but many of the global banks and insurance companies have been active in adopting use cases which are at the forefront, for example, I think these customer enablement, customer service, call centers," said Nicole Zhou, senior partner of McKinsey and Company.
However, combining AI with financial services is still at an early stage. Experts suggest for the financial industry to fully harness the power of AI, a deeper shift in the operating models of institutions is necessary, but this is expected to take time.
China takes lead in fintech innovations: experts
