State Council Provides Guidance on the "Internet Plus" Action Plan
On July 4, the State Council released the Guiding Opinions on Actively Promoting the "Internet Plus" Action Plan on its website, with the stated aim of achieving rapid, high-quality economic growth and industry development, taking advantage of China's scale and applications of the Internet to drive deep and comprehensive integration between the Internet and the real economy.
The document, which includes general requirements and targets, detailed action plans, and supportive policies, outlined 11 key "Internet Plus" actions, including:
- entrepreneurship and innovation
- collaborative manufacturing
- modern agriculture
- smart energy
- inclusive finance
- public services
- efficient logistics
- e-commerce
- convenient transportation
- green ecology
- artificial intelligence
In addition, the Guiding Opinions included 25 relevant supportive measures, categorized into five parts:
- Policy Environment: eliminate unreasonable mechanisms and policies, ease Internet-integrated product and service market access, and promote entrepreneurship and innovation
- New-Generation Information Infrastructure Development: accelerate research and development of new hardware engineering, such as chips and high-end servers, as well as applications of cloud computing, big data
- Public Resources Sharing: enhance public services and start pilot programs for public access to government data, encourage online access to national innovation platforms by small and medium enterprises
- Business Operation Support: increase government procurement of cloud services, innovate credit products and services, pilot equity crowdfunding
- Safety Regulations: improve risk assessment, safeguard network and information security, and protect fair competition
65 detailed corresponding development tasks in total and respective leading responsible ministries were specified, with an initial implementation phase by 2018 and a full completion by 2025, which was designed to be in line with the China Manufacturing 2025 strategy.
