China has vowed an even stronger push to entrench digital infrastructure’s role as an economic growth engine, after a rapid 5G roll-out in recent years that has helped lift its computing power to the world’s No 2 ranking, trailing only the US.
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In the five years to June this year, the number of 5G base stations in China had grown fivefold to 4.55 million and the number of gigabit broadband users had risen 34-fold to 226 million, substantially lifting the country’s computing power, Liu Liehong, the director of the National Data Bureau, told a news conference in Beijing on Thursday that focused on China’s achievements in digital infrastructure development.
But the country’s data infrastructure development is still in its early stages and it will continue to deploy large-scale facilities and foster a market-driven ecosystem to support the digital economy and scientific and technological innovation, bureau deputy director Xia Bing said at the same news conference.
“We’ll continuously build convenient, efficient, autonomous, secure and world-leading national data infrastructure,” he said.
China’s data industry has become a new growth driver for the digital economy, with more than 400,000 companies generating 5.86 trillion yuan (US$816.4 billion) in output last year – a jump of 117 per cent from the end of the 13th Five-Year Plan in 2020 – according to the National Data Development Research Institute, and it is expected to maintain a high level of growth in the next few years.
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In eastern China’s Yangtze River Delta, which includes some of the country’s most developed cities such as Shanghai, Suzhou and Hangzhou, a multi-tier, full-chain data industry ecosystem has taken shape, Liu said.