A host introduces products on live broadcasting in Yiwu, east China's Zhejiang Province, Feb. 8, 2021. (Xinhua/Huang Zongzhi)
BEIJING, Feb. 22 (Xinhua) -- The potential of China's digital economy was highlighted during the Spring Festival holiday extending from February 11 to 17 as the mobile internet traffic in the country hit new high, reported Shanghai Securities News Monday.
Data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) showed that the mobile internet traffic registered 3.573 million terabytes during the seven-day holiday, up 23.4 percent from the figure for the 2020 Spring Festival holiday.
The high growth of the traffic data is attributed to the rapid growth of China's netizens, coverage of mobile base stations and digital ecosystem level.
According to a report released by the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) in early February, as of December 2020, the internet users of China hit 989 million, with mobile internet users standing at 986 million.
The nearly-one-billion internet users constitute the world's largest digital society, said the report.
The information infrastructure construction in China has also been accelerated.
China has now built 718,000 5G base stations, and promoted the construction and sharing of 330,000 5G base stations, with over 180 million terminals connected. It has built the largest 5G network around the globe.
With the guarantee of the network infrastructure, China's mobile ecosystem continues to improve.
The prevention and control of the COVID-19 pandemic has expedited the full-swing digital transformation of society, involving individuals, enterprises and governments, said Zeng Yu, director with CNNIC.
Individuals are more inclined to turn to the internet for information, shopping and ordering food, and handle business and travel through online government applications and health codes, constantly sharing the digital dividends brought by the internet, Zeng added.
Driven by the stay-put policy, online Spring Festival greetings, entertainment and consumption also boomed.
According to MIIT, "cloud festival", digital red envelopes and online shopping have become new trends this year, driving the rapid growth of the mobile internet traffic, and cloud interaction, entertainment, shopping and other ways of "cloud life" are favored.
Data from the popular Chinese short-video platform Douyin showed that from February 4 to 15, the number of short videos for Spring Festival greetings increased by 11 folds year on year.
Data from Youku, a Chinese online video platform, showed that visits to the platform from January 28 to February 16 exceeded 2.3 billion, up 20 percent year on year.
Data from Chinese digital payment platform Alipay showed that the number of people participating in the online distribution of red envelopes increased by 270 percent, and 260 million people participated in the online "blessing sending" activity.
"We believe that the new label of China's digital economy in the next ten years should be intelligent economy, and all fields, industries and directions should turn to intelligent development," said Li Yanhong, chairman and CEO with Chinese tech giant Baidu.
The accelerated new infrastructure construction has laid a solid foundation for the rapid development of the internet industry and the wider application of next-generation information technologies, said Liu Jiuru, head of Huasting Research Institute, an industry research arm.
The new-generation artificial intelligence technology is integrating and being applied into various industries in a deeper and faster manner, pushing up the transformation of all economic and social sectors from digital and network development to intelligent development, Liu added.
(Edited by Gu Shanshan with Xinhua Silk Road, gushanshan.1987@163.com)
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