China steps up push to nurture cybersecurity companies to support digitisation of economy

China’s latest cybersecurity park in Beijing has signed up 10 new companies as the country ramps up efforts to develop a domestic cybersecurity industry.

The national-level park in the capital city was launched in late 2017 with the aim to develop a 100-billion-yuan (US$14.8 billion) market for cybersecurity in Beijing, contributing more than 330 billion yuan to the country’s GDP growth by 2020, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.

The cybersecurity companies that have signed up, including 360 Enterprise Security Group and Beijing Veda Information Technology Co, will move into the park’s two branches in Beijing’s Haidian and Tongzhou districts, according to the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Economy and Information Technology.

“The construction of the park is now well underway. Leading cybersecurity enterprises at home and abroad, as well as unicorns, will move there,” said Jiang Guangzhi, an official with the bureau.

The demand for internet security is growing in China as many of its cities roll out smart-city initiatives. In 2017, the country’s cybersecurity industry grew 27.6 per cent year on year to 43.92 billion yuan and was forecast to hit 54.6 billion yuan for the full year of 2018, according to the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT), a research institute under the country’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.