Data Analytics in China: Trends, Issues, and Challenges

The use of data in China has grown at an unprecedented rate. Qzone has an average of more than 640 million active users every day and receives more than 6 billion uploaded photographs every month. Baidu responds to 6 billion searches on more than 1 trillion of its webpages daily. China Unicom reports that mobile Internet users create more than 1 million records per second and store more than 2 trillion new records each month. The volume of data feeds from mobile Internet users increases at a compound annual growth rate of more than 100 percent. These feeds and searches eventually accumulate into a large volume of data. The public and private sectors in China have started to open data warehouses to upload a significant portion of data for information sharing and attracting users. This article addresses the present trends, issues, and challenges of adopting data analytics in China. More specifically, the article highlights the shortfall in data analytics talent and recommends certain remedies.