Analysis | Is China's new 'internet plus' ambition all about new smartphones?

China’s 'internet plus' strategy, announced in early March, promised to integrate mobile Internet, cloud computing and big data for manufacturing and promote the development of e-commerce, industrial networks and internet banking.

Smartphone users in Causeway Bay. Photo: SCMP Pictures

China’s 'internet plus' strategy, announced in early March, promised to integrate mobile Internet, cloud computing and big data for manufacturing and promote the development of e-commerce, industrial networks and internet banking.

But how would this ambitious plan to transform the country into a digital economy work in practice? Already more than 630 million Chinese use the Internet and there are 570 million mobile users who feed Internet businesses worth more than 2 trillion yuan (US$323 billion), according to a Ministry of Industry and Information Technology report in 2014. 

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