China’s industrial internet enters period of rapid growth

In recent years, China has witnessed continuous breakthroughs in the development of industrial internet, which has enjoyed significant improvement in network capacity and accelerated integration with and application in more industries in greater depth, and become an increasingly strong driving force for various industries.

The country has established over 70 industrial internet platforms of considerable influence on certain sectors and regions. These platforms connect 40 million sets of industrial equipment in over 30 key sectors of China’s national economy.

Not long ago, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) issued an action plan for the innovative development of industrial internet from 2021 to 2023, making arrangements for priorities in work related to industrial internet in the next three years.

The following three years will be a crucial period of rapid growth of China’s industrial internet, according to Xu Xiaolan, head of the China Academy of Industrial Internet (CAII).

In the next three years, a batch of key technologies in such fields as networking, identification, platform, and security will achieve industrialization, and the country’s capacity for the supply of industrial chips, industrial software, and industrial control systems will be evidently improved, Xu explained.

Such breakthroughs in basic technological capabilities will further support the innovative development of China’s industrial internet, and lay a good foundation for the growth of new technologies, business forms and models, she pointed out.

The MIIT replaced its goal of basically establishing the infrastructure and industrial system for industrial internet set in the previous action plan on industrial internet development with the goal of advancing rapid and high-quality construction of new infrastructure for industrial internet, promoting new business forms and models on a large scale, and significantly improving the overall strength of industrial internet in the new action plan.

According to the action plan, the country intends to infuse vitality into the application of industrial internet in various industries while promoting the development of its industrial internet industry in a bid to advance the development of the industry in an all-round way, and create about 100 pilot demonstration cases for the application of new models in vertical sub-industries of industrial internet.

One of the highlights of the action plan lies in cultivating new business models for the growth of industrial internet, said Gu Weixi, an official with the CAII.

The action plan outlines the prospects of industrial internet from five aspects, including developing intelligent manufacturing, strengthening network-based collaboration, promoting personalized customization, extending services and realizing digital management.

China aims to develop a number of typical business models and application scenarios for the vertical sub-industries of individual internet, and replicate and promote them in at least 200 industrial enterprises by 2023, according to the action plan.