Skyscrapers border the lush green landscaping in Shenzhen's central business district. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

The Greater Bay Area Innovation Conference 2020 was held in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, over the weekend, to promote smart cities and digital government.

Nie Xinping, deputy mayor of Shenzhen, said that the city hopes to promote cybersecurity and industrial innovation, which can provide security support for the concept of a smart city and streamlined government services.

Hosted by the Shenzhen municipal government, the conference theme was "New infrastructure, new security".

The development of 5G and new infrastructure, such as artificial intelligence, big data centers and an industrial internet has accelerated in the country this year.

"The core of new infrastructure is mobile internet, the internet of things, cloud computing, big data and AI, the final result of which is smart cities," said Fang Binxing, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering.

In July, Shenzhen launched a blueprint on new infrastructure construction from 2020 to 2025. The first batch of new infrastructure the city will build consists of 95 projects with a total investment of 411.9 billion yuan ($62.6 billion), the blueprint said. The city's construction scale and innovation capacity should be ranked among the world's top cities by the end of 2025.

The new infrastructure will greatly promote the development of the digital economy, but it will also bring unprecedented security challenges to cyberspace, Nie said.

In the conference, hundreds of industry leaders discussed new cybersecurity problems and shared thoughts on various innovations in that industry.

"Information technology can be used to overcome problems that arise in traditional lifestyles, management and governance methods," said Guo Renzhong, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering.

Driven by cutting-edge technology, people' s lives and social development are transforming, while cities are becoming smart. However, while using new technology, people must take responsible measures to protect data security and privacy. At the same time, laws and regulations must cover the use of data, Guo added.

China attaches great importance to data security and is exploring data security laws to strengthen the protection of data and personal information.

In addition, China will soon issue regulations related to cybersecurity, according to officials at the Ministry of Public Security.