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In today's world, modern information technologies, represented by the Internet, have seen an endless stream of breakthroughs. Internet infrastructure is globally interconnected and the digital economy is booming, making the interests of all countries more closely linked. Since its full-function access to the Internet in 1994, China has scored remarkable achievements in Internet development. The capability of its network infrastructure has been improved in all aspects. Emerging technologies are advancing by leaps and bounds. Internet applications are driving the vigorous development of the digital economy. China not only uses the Internet, but also promotes and contributes to its development; and we have proactively shared our experience, wisdom, and development achievements with the rest of the world.
In terms of basic resources, China is continuously improving its capabilities of Internet technologies, playing an increasingly important role in maintaining the stable operation of the global Internet. As an essential hub and relay station of the global network topology, China supports the smooth flow of information in the global Internet. In terms of domain name resolution servers, there are more than 2.68 million recursive servers in the world and over 1.02 million of them are in China.
Regarding root mirror servers as well as service nodes of the national top-level domain name system
, China has introduced 12 root mirror servers and deployed 16 service nodes for its national top-level domain name system in Russia, Singapore, Germany, the UK, the US and other countries and regions, providing safe and stable top-level .cn domain name resolution services. In addition, China is among the global leaders in terms of the traffic-carrying capacity of the network architecture of its Internet enterprises, deploying CDN nodes around the world to provide traffic acceleration services to users in 70-plus countries and regions.
In regard to emerging technologies, China has achieved leapfrog development in Internet technology and application and been sharing its dividends of Internet technology progress with the rest of the world. In the field of communications technology, as of November 2019, the number of patents required for 5G standard filed by Chinese enterprises ranked first in the world.
In the formulation of the unified 5G standard for the world, Chinese Internet enterprises, universities, research institutes, as well as major Chinese companies that use relevant technology, have all been ac-tive participants in key projects of international standardization organizations such as the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). This has fully demonstrated the vitality of Chinese stakeholders in technology R&D in this regard and their open attitude towards cooperation in relevant fields. In the field of AI, more than one-third of all the relevant patent applications of the world come from China,
[1]
covering key technologies, including image recognition, biometric recognition, voice recognition, and machine learning. By 2019, China boasted more than 4,000 AI enterprises,
[2]
ranking second in the world. In the area of the blockchain, as of September 2019, China held 53 percent of the blockchain patents worldwide,
[3]
acting as one of the core forces boosting the development of blockchain technology. In the field of open-source software
, China's contribution to the international open-source community has been growing. According to the open-source community GitHub,
China's open-source code use increased by 48% year-on-year in 2019, second only to that of the US.
With regard to model innovation, China has created many diverse forms of Internet application and industrial ecology, which has played a positive role in promoting the development of the global Internet. First, our model innovations, represented by mobile payment, provide full-fledged schemes for the world. China's mature application models in a variety of fields, such as infrastructure services, mobile tool portals and content services, have been exported, providing rich development experience for peers worldwide. Mobile payment, highlighted by Alipay and WeChat Pay, is leading the global payment system into a cashless era. Second, model innovations such as cross-border e-commerce have boosted the world economy, especially trade development. In 2019, 186.21 billion yuan worth of China's retail goods were imported and exported through the cross-border e-commerce management platform of China Customs. China successively signed e-commerce cooperation memorandums and established bilateral e-commerce cooperation mechanisms with 22 countries and regions. Through innovation-driven development and international cooperation, China's e-commerce has benefited all parties involved and even the whole world by promoting world trade and economic growth, serving as an important engine for the growth of global trade.
With respect to its integration with various industries, China's Internet has kept boosting the transformation and upgrading of the real economy. The rising tide of the digital economy has fostered new growth drivers for the sustainable development of the world economy. First, industrial Internet has added vitality to the Made in China initiative and contributed to the de-velopment of an interconnected and interdependent global manufacturing system that brings benefits that everyone can share. Inspired by the Internet Plus initiative, flexible manufacturing, network-based manufacturing, green manufacturing, and intelligent manufacturing have all achieved rapid development, driving global manufacturers to enhance cooperation and jointly advance industry transformation. Second, progress in the digitalization of agriculture and the service sector has contributed to the development of industrial Internet. The integrated application of Internet-based information technologies, remote sensing satellites, and the Internet of Things has enabled intelligent agriculture to develop steadily, with the production and marketing models of agricultural products continuously upgraded. The Internet continues to penetrate a host of fields such as lifestyle services, financial payments, and logistics and delivery, and keeps promoting the digitalization and upgrading of traditional service industries.
In benefiting people's life, China's Internet has brought convenience to people in their daily life and helped improve the well-being of the world population. First, as more people are connected to the Internet, China has helped push up the global Internet penetration. As of June 2019, China's Internet user population reached 854 million and the Internet penetration rate was 61.2 percent. The continuous growth of Internet users has contributed to the further popularization of the global Internet. Second, the Internet has heightened people's sense of fulfillment and further improved the well-being of the world population. For a long time, Internet application has been booming in China and e-government services have been improving, offering great convenience to the general public. E-commerce and other formats of the digital economy have provided new opportunities for employment and entrepreneurship, changing the overall employment structure. Third, the Internet helps needy people and contributes wisdom and strength to the global effort to eradicate poverty. China has proactively explored ways to shake off poverty with the help of the Internet, making notable achievements in five major programs, respectively for higher Internet penetration rates, rural e-commerce development, Internet-supported education, information services, and online public welfare campaigns. These constitute the Chinese solution for Internet-based poverty alleviation worldwide.
In addition to all the achievements we have made in Internet technology, model innovation, and the integration of the Internet with society and industries, new historical opportunities still abound and, in the future, we should work harder to grasp these opportunities, pool our wisdom to promote Chinese practices, and work together with countries across the world to build up pillars for a community with a shared future in cyberspace and advance global Internet development despite all difficulties.
First, a new tide is about to come for network infrastructure environment building. For one thing, the 5G network will be rolled out fully. 5G, edge computing and other technologies will make ubiquitous access possible so that people, devices and things can all stay connected anytime and anywhere, pushing the Internet of Things into the era of the Internet of Everything (IoE). With key features such as continuous wide-area network coverage, high capacity at hotspots, low power consumption, extensive connection, low delay and high reliability, 5G will spur the intelligent transformation of traditional industries, accelerate the industrial application of artificial intelligence and big data, and spawn a large number of innovative applications and industry models. It will improve the overall efficiency of our society and push up the total factor labor productivity in related industries. For another thing, IPv6 will be put into wide use. Over the next three to five years, China will carry out targeted research efforts to make breakthroughs in some core technologies of IPv6 and continue to promote the upgrading and transformation towards IPv6, putting it into significantly wider use.
Second, we will see important development opportunities for technological innovations. Currently, a number of major technologies are on the verge of major changes, and breakthroughs occur frequently in the forefront of science and technology development. Emerging technologies, including advanced manufacturing, quantum computing and brain-inspired computing, have witnessed rapid development, and new computing architectures, production methods, new industrial forms and business models have been coming out one after another as a result in the information industry, providing unprecedented opportunities for collaborative innovations for the world. Moving into the future, we will continue to improve our technologies in future network, IoE, blockchain, big data, artificial intelligence and other fields, accelerate the integrated and innovative application of new-generation information technologies, share technological dividends with other countries, and join hands with the rest of the world to push global information technologies, as well as their application and relevant industries, up to a new level, in a bid to foster new production methods and diverse industrial forms for the global digital economy.
Third, we will face opportunities for global industrial upgrading. Now, the Internet is building brand-new models for industrial development and operation in the world. We need to steer global industrial development from a strategic perspective, and make full use of Internet technologies to transform traditional industries in an all-round manner, from all angles and covering full industry chains; building a strong, intelligent and safe industrial Internet. China will engage deeply in the global new industrial revolution, give full play to its advantages in different links on the innovation chain, industry chain and value chain, and make its contribution to the global industrial transformation.
Fourth, China's Internet application and market will continue to develop at a high pace in the next few years. In 2019, China's online retail market was worth 10.63 trillion yuan, exceeding the 10 trillion mark for the first time and ranking first in the world for the seventh year in a row. As such, China has become the world's largest online retail market. However, the number of online shoppers in China increased from 260 million in 2013 to 640 million in 2019, making the country the world's largest mobile payment market. In the next few years, at least 100 million more people in China will become new netizens, and this holds great potential for the further development of personal Internet applications, pushing them to both younger and older population groups, as well as those living in third- and fourth-tier cities and villages and towns, who have not yet been connected to the Internet. Instant messaging, online shopping, online news, search engines and other applications will continue to be widely and frequently used and they will gradually form their ecological chains and platforms. Applications such as online payment, online food ordering, and online wealth management will maintain relatively high growth rates, bringing high market revenues to Internet enterprises. At present, China's cross-border e-commerce is developing rapidly, and the new retail industry is on the rise with its market getting bigger and bringing more opportunities. We hope people all over the world can come and share China's Internet dividends and digital dividends.
Figures are honest and objective. As a vital contributor to the infrastructure building, operation and management of Chinese information society, the China Internet Network Information Center(CNNIC) has been doing Internet-related statistics and research work for 20-plus years in tandem. Here, we officially release the English version of China's Internet Development (2013–2018) , so as to share with the world China's achievements in Internet development since 2013. Hopefully, this will provide reference for the development and governance of the Internet in other countries.
“Boundless is the ocean where we sail with favorable wind.” As we have just ushered in a time of rapid Internet development, a new round of technological revolution and industrial transformation calls upon all countries in the world to move forward hand in hand. CNNIC is willing to build a bridge for exchanges between China and the rest of the world, and work together with people engaged in Internet governance, research and in the Internet industry from other countries to forge consensuses and share insights, and jointly push for faster global Internet development, benefiting Internet users all over the world.
Zeng Yu
Research Fellow & CNNIC Director
February 14, 2020
[1] Source: 2018 World AI Industry Development Blue Book released by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology and Gartner
[2] Source: MIT Technology Review
[3] Source: Blockchain White Paper (2019) released by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology