China's 13th Five-year Plan Outlines Technology Development Goals
Xinhuanet, 3/17/16
Following the recent conclusion of the two sessions of the National People's Congress (NPC) and the Chinese Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), Chinese lawmakers have released the full text of the country's 13th Five-Year Plan for economic and social development. Technology-related highlights include:
1. Promote industrialization of state-of-the-art research areas including advanced semiconductors, robotics, intelligent systems, smart traffic, precision medicine, smart materials, virtual reality and interactive media.
2. Standardize the development of internet finance.
3. Implement the "China Manufacturing 2025" plan for smart manufacturing. Develop critical technological equipment for smart manufacturing; strengthen smart manufacturing standards, industrial electronic infrastructure, and core support software; hasten the construction of internet infrastructure for industry; promote new models of smart manufacturing; create a smart manufacturing industry alliance.
4. Achieve full coverage of high speed fiber optic networks in towns and cities, providing access service capacity of at least 1 Gbps and choices for household broadband faster than 100 Mbps. Administrative villages should have fiber optic coverage of 98% with access service capacity of at least 100 Mbps in qualifying areas and at least half of rural households should have choices for broadband internet faster than 50 Mbps.
5. Popularize high speed wireless broadband through accelerated 4G network construction for full coverage of county towns and densely populated villages. Public spaces in towns and cities should offer free WLAN hot spots. Accelerate building of wireless network coverage in remote mountains, grasslands, and shoals.
6. Promote research into key technology for 5G and superfast broadband, begin commercial use of 5G networks, and completely upgrade to Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6). Invest in breakthrough research in the fields of big data and cloud computing key technologies, autonomous control systems, high-end industrial and large-scale management software, and the emerging field of artificial intelligence.
7. Increase oversight of internet service providers' pricing structures to reduce the cost of broadband service while increasing overall speeds.
8. Develop a modern internet industry by promoting the development of cloud computing, internet of things (IoT), online medicine, online education, and O2O.
9. Implement a big data strategy and promote the open application and sharing of data resources. Create a big data security management system which implements different grades of management for different categories of data.
10. Develop the emerging cultural product industry including online video, mobile multimedia, digital publishing, animation, and games. Encourage publishing, film production, and traditional arts to adapt to the new industry. Accelerate the integration of national cable television with smart TVs and set-top boxes (STB).
Editor's Note: For more background on this topic, please see "China's State Council Releases 2025 Manufacturing Industry Development Plan" MD 05/19/15 issue.
Keywords: government policy film digital publishing hardware Internet animation broadband rural telecom television wireless online video network construction online education 4G wireless broadband State Council 5G cloud computing CPPCC IPv6 big data O2O IoT virtual reality artificial intelligence semiconductor online healthcare smart TV set-top box robot TV set