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5G to stimulate US$500 billion in China tech growth over next five years, government researcher projects

  • That development would rev up digitisation across industries, yielding more than US$1.5 trillion in growth over the same period

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China Telecom technicians set up a 5G base station near the Yellow River in Lanzhou, capital of Gansu province in northwestern China, on May 16, 2019. Photo: Reuters

The roll-out of 5G services across China is predicted to spur new growth in the country’s technology sector amid trade tensions with the United States, as industries meet the challenge of adopting advanced applications for the next-generation mobile infrastructure.

At the Global Mobile Internet Conference held in the southern coastal city of Guangzhou on Saturday, a representative from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) forecast that 5G will stimulate growth in the country’s information technology industry by 3.3 trillion yuan (US$479 billion) over the next five years.

That development is expected to rev up digitisation across traditional industries, which would yield more than 10 trillion yuan in growth over the same period.

“4G has changed people’s lives,” said Chen Jinqiao, deputy chief engineer at the academy, which is under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), during his presentation on China’s 5G development in the conference. But he indicated that 5G has the potential “to change society”, as different industries adopt the technology to their various requirements.

Chen’s growth estimates come amid the increased pace of 5G infrastructure spending in China, which is attempting to move ahead in the global race to deploy ultra-fast, next-generation mobile networks.
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