Internet Plus: the Roadmap for the National Strategyby Pony Ma Huateng talks about the relationship between old and new industries in the age of Internet. Photo provided to China Daily

Established examples include: Baidu, the search engine and online advertisement platform; Taobao, an online marketplace; Alipay, a third-party payment service that uses traditional banks for transactions over the Web.

In April, Tencent signed an agreement with the Shanghai municipal government to have the company's instant messaging app WeChat used by people to make appointments for passport registration, paying utility bills and checking traffic violations.

According to DuBravac, the author of Digital Destiny, very few things are digitized in today's world. "But they could be digitized－our chairs could be digital, our carpet could be digital and our lights could be digital," says DuBravac, who is the chief economist for US-based Consumer Electronics Association, while speaking at the Shanghai exhibition.

"It all involves putting sensors to collect data and using them in a smart way," DuBravac says. "But connection and digitization serve the same goal ... If I digitize the chairs in a lecture hall and connect them, then the organizer would know how many people have come to the lecture. If I just digitize the chair but it does not connect to anything, then it's not helpful."

In the book, DuBravac recalls an incident from his childhood, when his mother fell asleep at the wheel and their car veered off the road. Though no one was injured, the memory lingered.

He wrote that driverless cars would be the answer to such worries as more prototypes of such automobiles were being tested.