By Chen Meiling

Construction of smart and environmentally friendly communities will become an emerging segment with great future potential in the Chinese market, which conforms to the idea of high-quality development of the country, experts said.

Application of digital tools should be enhanced to help the intelligent management of facilities and equipment in communities, save energy, as well as safeguard the internet and information security, to build autonomous, safe and controllable smart cities, in improving people's livelihood, they said at the annual conference of the China national standardization technical committee for digital technique of intelligent building and residence community.

The high-quality construction of cities was highlighted at the work conference of national housing and urban-rural development this year, in a way to solve the many problems in densely populated urban areas, according to Ni Jiangbo, an official from the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, at the event.

In March, the committee cooperated with Shanghai Lianyu Intelligent Technology Co Ltd to build intelligent door locks at long-term rental apartments. Yanjingli, a green and smart community pilot project in Beijing, has also updated its infrastructure to provide more intelligent services for residents. The committee said more projects would be carried out in cities such as Shanghai, Ningbo, Zhejiang province, and Shenzhen, Guangdong province.

China now has about 330,000 smart communities, which is expected to occupy 50 percent of all communities across the country, according to Ma Hong, deputy director of the committee.

The committee will further promote the use of digital tools in rental, communications security, intelligent elderly care and home appliances sectors.

Dai Hong, former official of the Standardization Administration of China, said standardization is the basis for the healthy development of smart cities, while broader application and international cooperation should also be enhanced.

About 500 people from major ministries of China and company representatives attended the event, which was co-sponsored by the housing channel of Tencent.