On April 18, under the guidance of the Digital China Summit Organizing Committee, the 2024 National Finals of the “Xing Spark·Prairie Fire” Innovation Marathon Open Competition, jointly organized by China's Industrial Bank (CIB), the Fujian Provincial Federation of Trade Unions, and the Communist Youth League Fujian Provincial Committee, concluded successfully in Fuzhou. Chen Xinjian, President of CIB, attended the event and delivered a speech. Experts from related fields, including the Fujian Provincial Department of Industry and Information Technology, Alibaba Cloud Computing Co., Ltd., Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd., the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and Shanghai Jiao Tong University, served as judges for the finals. Representatives from notary offices and media reporters were also present to witness the event.
In his opening remarks, Chen Xinjian highlighted innovation as the primary driver of development, an area where CIB has placed strategic emphasis. In recent years, the bank has significantly increased investments in technology and innovation resources, actively integrated new models, technologies, and tools into its operations and management, vigorously advanced high-quality development, and gradually transitioned its digital transformation from the construction phase to the harvest phase. As a core event in the financial sector of the Digital China Innovation Competition, the “Xing Spark·Prairie Fire” Innovation Marathon has become an important platform for promoting financial innovation. The National Finals only showcased the brilliant achievements of the final projects but also reflected the collaborative innovation and open cooperation among various sectors of society. Chen expressed his hope that participants would use the competition as a medium to inspire each other, work together, tap into more innovative potential, and facilitate the implementation of outstanding innovations, thereby continuously injecting innovative momentum into high-quality development.
The “Xing Spark·Prairie Fire” Innovation Marathon has been successfully held for three consecutive years and represents a concrete practice by CIB in developing digital finance and serving the digital economy. The 2024 competition, themed “Innovation without Boundaries and Intelligence for the Future,” featured both internal and open competitions. The internal competition targeted employees of the CIB Group, attracting over 9,000 participants and collecting 705 innovative project proposals. The open competition issued a nationwide call for submissions, focusing on digital finance and scenario ecosystems, and received 727 project entries. The competition was divided into four major regions—East, South, West, and North—with 12 outstanding projects advancing to the finals through rigorous selection. During the finals, the expert judging panel examined project outcomes from diverse perspectives, provided guidance for deepening their applications, and selected the winning projects. This year's competition focuses on cutting-edge areas of digital finance, promoting exchange and cooperation among banks, governments, enterprises, academia, and research institutions, and fostering an open, innovative, and interactive ecosystem for mutual benefit.
As the co-initiator and organizer of the competition, CIB has, in recent years, embraced the era's transition from “Digital Fujian” to “Digital China,” vigorously promoting digital transformation, implementing reforms in technological systems, strengthening technological teams, increasing investment in technological resources, and launching major technological projects. The bank is committed to building the capability to connect everything and becoming the best ecosystem-enabling bank. Currently, the bank boasts a technology team of nearly 8,000 employees and invests over RMB 8 billion annually in technology. Guided by an “enterprise-level” philosophy and “standardized” methodologies, the bank has achieved phased results in its digital transformation and is now advancing from “Digital CIB” to “Intelligent CIB.”