China announces Digital China development plan
BEIJING (XINHUA)China has released a 2025 action plan to build a Digital China, outlining key initiatives like a programme called 'AI Plus', infrastructure upgrades, data industry boosts, and talent development programmes.China's National Data Administration announced that the plan calls for the promotion of the market-oriented reform of data resource allocation, alongside the accelerated development of a unified national data market, the promotion of a data-driven digital economy tailored to local conditions, and the comprehensive enhancement of the overall level of digital development.By the end of 2025, China aims to achieve major progress in building a Digital China, with the continuous expansion of quality productive forces in the digital industry, as well as significant improvements in the quality and efficiency of digital economic development.
The plan also aims for the added value of core digital economy industries to contribute over 10 percent of the country's gross domestic product, and sets goals for steady progress in building a unified data factor market, with computing power to be increased to over 300 one quintillion floating-point operations a second.
The initiative outlines eight major areas for action, including institutional innovation, local brand development and AI Plus application.China's digital industry generated a revenue of 8.5 trillion yuan (about $1.18 trillion) in the first quarter of this year, up 9.4 percent year-on-year, according to data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
This year's government work report noted that the country will "accelerate the digitalisation of manufacturing, foster a number of service providers with both industry expertise and digital know-how, and bolster support for the digital transformation of small and medium-sized enterprises."
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