Drones. Disinfecting robots. Supercomputers. The coronavirus outbreak is a test for China’s tech industry

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Hong Kong (CNN Business) China has spent decades nurturing its tech sector .
The country’s tech giants have responded to the outbreak by deploying autonomous vehicles to bring supplies to medical workers, fitting drones with thermal cameras to improve detection of the virus and lending their computing power to help develop a vaccine.
It’s not clear how much tech can help control the virus, which has now infected at least 79,000 people worldwide and killed more than 2,600, mostly in mainland China.
The government has long stressed technological innovation as an important pillar of growth , and Beijing has spent billions of dollars on subsidies, loans and bonds designed to spur advancements in artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles and other areas as it works to develop a tech sector that can compete with Silicon Valley.
“The fight against the epidemic cannot be achieved without the support of science and technology,” Chinese President Xi Jinping said earlier this month, according to state news agency Xinhua
The Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology on Thursday called on the tech sector for help, suggesting that robots, temperature screening machines and devices that can help reduce human contact should be deployed.
China’s efforts to create its own Silicon Valley date to the 1980s, when authorities began designating parts of the country as “high-tech development zones” focused on consumer electronics and biotech, among other fields.
Tech is also the linchpin of Beijing’s “Made in China 2025” initiative, a plan to shift the economy from manufacturing to high-tech sectors.
China was home to nine of the world’s 20 most valuable tech companies in 2018 — a big leap over the two it claimed five years earlier, according to a report by venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins.
As China now fights the coronavirus, technology won’t be the “dominating factor” that stops the outbreak, according to Danny Mu, a Beijing-based analyst of emerging technologies at Forrester

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