BEIJING, May 21 (Xinhua) -- China's information consumption is likely to extend robust growth in the following years along with its upgrading information infrastructure and innovation of the 5G information and communication technology (ICT), say analysts.
Currently, Chinese central government and local governments are accelerating their policy arrangements for boosting information consumption.
This year, China's information consumption may reach 5.5 trillion yuan, estimated industry experts, saying that the figure is expected to surpass six trillion yuan in 2020, likely to indirectly bring about 15 trillion yuan worth of gross domestic product (GDP).
Under such circumstances, improving the quality and size of information consumption and cultivating new growth drivers in middle- and high-end information consumption are broadly anticipated to be the theme of the future information consumption-boosting policies.
As a matter of fact, a new round of upgraded information consumption-fostering policies is underway.
On a May 13-held national information and software services industry working meeting, China's industry and IT regulator – the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) proposed to optimize policies system, propel improvement of both the size and quality of the industry and increase high-quality products and services supply to improve supply capacity and consumption environment.
A batch of new information consumption demonstration cities is aimed to be crafted in a faster pace, together with accelerating information and communication infrastructure construction and commercial use of 5G technologies, upgrading of consumer electronics towards intelligent type, incubating new sector growth engines such as ultra high definition video, and further reducing telecommunication charges.
In the meantime, Chinese local governments are mulling measures in this regard. In southwest China, Sichuan Province will actively advance constructing of pilot information consumption demonstration city. Beijing vowed to formulate a series of policies to encourage information consumption. In east China, Zhejiang Province intended to focus on key areas and enhance policies and mechanisms implementation to stimulate information consumption.
Statistics showed that China's information consumption stood at about five trillion yuan in 2018, up more than 11 percent year on year, much higher than the 6.6 percent rise of the country’s GDP.
On how to stimulate information consumption, the new generation of IT represented by 5G technology will play a crucial role.
Earlier on May 8, MIIT and the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission released a circular requiring faster construction pace of 5G networks and enhancing internet application capacity to boost information consumption.
By far, Beijing, Shandong Province, Sichuan Province, Jiangsu Province, Guangdong Province, and Shenzhen are carrying out intensive testing of commercial 5G to cement information consumption infrastructure.
From 2020 to 2025, commercial use of 5G technology may directly generate 8.2 trillion yuan of information consumption, of which 4.3 trillion yuan may be contributed by upgrading of terminal products such as smart phones and wearable devices, said Zhang Chunfei, head of the supervision and research department of the Policy and Economic Research Institute under China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT).
Besides, ongoing rapid development of other new generation of IT such as cloud computing, big data, the Internet of Things and artificial intelligence (AI) will significantly improve supports for information consumption in China.
Taking cloud computing as an example, its users are expanding from small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) to large enterprises, governmental institutions, and financial institutions and information consumption is involved a growing number of areas including not only games, E-commerce and video, but also untraditional areas such as manufacturing, governmental affairs, finance, education, healthcare, and corporate management, according to Zhang Li, vice head of industry development research department of the Policy and Economic Research Institute under CAICT.
In terms of information products, mid- and high-end products such as smart devices are likely to trigger a new round of consumption demand.
As CAICT predicts, smart hardware products in such emerging fields as smart wearable devices, on-board smart terminals for cars, and smart housing are expected to hail a round of explosive growth and consumption of information products may grow to 2.6 trillion yuan by 2020. (Edited by Duan Jing, duanjing@xinhua.org)
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