China releases 5-year development plan for information, communications sector

BEIJING, Sept. 7 -- China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has issued a development plan for the information and communications industry during the 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026-2030) to promote high-quality development of this sector.

By 2030, a new-generation communications network with comprehensive coverage and leading performance is expected to be fully established, according to the plan, while adding that efforts will be made to accelerate the development of a technologically advanced, secure and controllable information and communications industrial system.

Meanwhile, an agile and efficient governance system integrating technology and management is expected to be effectively established, and network and data security capabilities featuring all-domain coordination and practical application will be significantly enhanced, the plan said.

The industry's empowerment level and degree of globalization will be further improved, laying a solid foundation for basically achieving modernization of the information and communications sector by 2035, the plan added.

The plan also outlines 13 key indicators, including achieving information and communications industry revenue of 4.1 trillion yuan (about 604.8 billion U.S. dollars) by 2030, cumulative investment of 3.8 trillion yuan in information infrastructure, and an average annual growth rate of 7 percent in total telecommunications business volume.

By 2030, there will be 50 5G (including 5G-A) base stations per 10,000 people, intelligent computing power will reach 9,800 EFLOPS, and the 5G user penetration rate will reach 95 percent, the ministry said.

EFLOPS, or ExaFLOPS, is a unit of computing performance, with each unit representing 1 quintillion floating-point operations per second.