At the first "Minister’s Channel" of the first session of the 14th National People's Congress on March 5, Mr. Jin Zhuanglong, Minister of Industry and Information Technology, stated that China has built the largest and most advanced 5G network, ranking in the forefront of the world in 5G development.
Speaking of the 5G construction this year, Mr. Jin said that so far China has built more than 2.34 million 5G base stations, with more than 575 million 5G mobile phone users; more than half of the 97 major economic sectors have applied 5G technology, including in the fields of mining, ports, electricity, large aircraft manufacturing and so on.
As for the next goals, Mr. Jin said, "It is expected that 600,000 new 5G base stations will be launched this year so that more than 2.9 million base stations will have been in use this year. With these developments, the focus will be on improvement in several aspects. For urban areas, while many cities have had 5G access, what we should strive for is better 5G coverage; for rural areas, while 5G service has been available in every county, we need to further extend the network in seeking wider coverage as well as deeper coverage in industrial parks."
"On top of that, we need to implement the '5G+' action plan. In addition to expanding the application scale in the major economic sectors as I just mentioned, we need to make greater efforts (to promote 5G application) in the manufacturing industry. The empowerment of the '5G+ Industrial Internet' would be crucial for the leapfrog development of the manufacturing industry. In this regard, we plan to build more than 10,000 5G-connected factories during the '14th Five-Year Plan' period."
At the same time, 6G development is also underway. According to Mr. Jin, the industrial community has been supported to establish a 6G promotion group, codenamed "IMT-2030 (6G) Promotion Group".