(MENAFN- The Peninsula) German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Sunday opens a major IT business fair where official partner China will showcase its rise as a high-tech power.
Merkel - who has visited China seven times in a decade - will meet Vice Premier Ma Kai as more than 600 Chinese companies exhibit their tech marvels at the CeBIT fair in the western city of Hanover.
Jack Ma, head of Alibaba - China's answer to eBay and Amazon - will give the keynote address, and companies including Huawei, Xiaomi and Lenovo will fill more than 3,000 square metres (30,000 square feet) of exhibition space.
For Germany, Europe's biggest economy, the event aims to further cement economic ties with fellow export power China as both seek to adapt to the sweeping digitisation of the world economy.
China's huge showing "makes it the biggest and strongest partner country presentation we've ever seen at CeBIT," said top exhibition executive Oliver Frese.
Bucking China's wider economic slowdown, information and communication technology is booming in the world's biggest smartphone market with the highest number of Internet users.
"China was known as a supplier of components and later as a supplier of hardware, smartphones, tablets and also PCs," said CeBIT spokesman Hartwig von Sass.
"Now China has numerous companies that have become world leaders ... for example Huawei, ZTE, Neusoft or Alibaba, some of which are far bigger than western IT companies.
"We see this as a shift on the world map: digitisation is going east."
- 'Pent-up demand' -
The head of German IT industry group BITKOM, Dieter Kempf, expressed awe at the scale of the Chinese market.
"This consumer market in China is something we can barely comprehend, more than 1.2 billion people with significant pent-up demand for IT solutions, which is far beyond European dimensions," he told AFP.
At a news conference, von Sass said the German market for IT, telecommunications and consumer electronics is set to grow 1.5 percent this year to 155.5 billion euros ($163 billion), despite falling sales of consumer electronics, with growth driven by gains in software and IT services.
Merkel, in her weekend video address, urged German companies, from corporate titans to family businesses, to get on board with the digital revolution because "the change will come much faster than we thought".
In the area of start-up funding, she said "Germany is not yet where we want to be".
Besides access to finance, she said "it is also a question of culture" and of "being able to live with the idea that out of 10 projects, only one will make it in the end".
Legal Disclaimer:
MENAFN provides the information “as is” without warranty of any kind. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the provider above.