(Yicai Global) Aug. 4 -- Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. [NYSE:BABA] and the the Macao Special Administrative Region's government have struck a strategic cooperation agreement, under which Alibaba will work with Macao in transportation management, tourism and medical services and use cloud computing and artificial intelligence technologies to help turn it into a smart tourism city.

The partnership will last four years, per the agreement. In the first phase from now to 2019, the two sides will build a cloud computing center in Macao and roll out projects in smart tourism, smart transportation, smart health care and smart city governance. In the second phase from 2019 to 2021, the collaboration will encompass environmental protection, customs clearance and economic forecasting. The partnership is expected to yield preliminary results by mid-2018.

Macao is a typical tourism city. It has only some 600,000 permanent residents, but receives 30 million tourists each year. Alibaba will help Macao achieve smart allocation of public resources, gain a full understanding of its overall traffic conditions and optimize traffic movement on a real-time basis.

"City Brain is an artificial intelligence system that piloted in Hangzhou, Zhejiang and has helped increase traffic speed in pilot regions by as much as 11 percent," Hu Xiaoming, vice president of Alibaba, said. "The successful trial of City Brain in Hangzhou will provide a reference for building Macao into a smart tourism city in terms of technology and experience."