As a new breakthrough technology with enormous economic potential, big data provides a new thinking and platform for China and U.S. cooperation.

In the past two years, big data technology is developing at an astonishing speed. Its economic benefits and social influence continue to be recognized by more people. Big data is even listed by scholars as one of essential factors of production such as hard assets and human capital.

U.S. is playing a leading role in deploying big data and developing the expertise needed to harness this information technology and create value. According to an estimation by McKinsey, the widespread use of big data and analytics in U.S. could produce $290-610 billion in annual productivity gains and cost savings.

China, quickly following the steps of the U.S., is investing a huge amount of time and money into big data technology and its applications. Big data analysis of everything from health care to preference in entertainment and super-computing devices are being made. China’s Tianhe-2 supercomputer is the fastest in the world dealing 33.86 quadrillion floating point operations per second. According to government projections, there are more than 1.35 billion people and more than 618 million Internet users, China’s information market value will exceed 3.2 trillion Yuan (US$515 billion) in 2015, capable of creating a new golden era for the internet industry in China and altering the competitive landscape of various other industries.

As a new breakthrough technology with enormous economic potential, big data provides a new thinking and platform for China and U.S. cooperation. Four areas are feasible for China-U.S. cooperation initially: uncover business and sales potentials, build smart cities, police affairs and law enforcement cooperation, and cyber and information security cooperation.

Firstly, uncover business and sales potentials. Big data can be used to identify specific consuming groups and treat them differently. Google has been authorized a patent to dynamically price contents. The New York Times also reported that it has started compiling analytic profiles of its customers and predicting purchasing trends based on subscribers' purchasing history. US-based budget hotel operator Super 8 Worldwide recently declared it has gained from the application of big data in China. In just one system, Super 8 Worldwide gets data analysis, data integration, and data reporting, so management can more easily analyze the business from multiple dimensions. It is intending to use the technology to expand from 450 hotels to 1,000 hotels in three years in China. Comrise China is also researching the possibility of aggregating inputs of U.S. and Chinese websites to gain a more precise understanding of who is looking for new jobs and what Internet activity can trigger a job search. In the same way, emerging global Chinese corporations like Haier and Huawei are trying to use big data to define hidden or previously unrecognized buyer behavior and market trends in U.S. and other oversea markets.