The State Council, China’s cabinet, said the government would spend more than Rmb430bn ($70bn) in 2015 on improving the country’s online network and at least another Rmb700bn over the following two years.
Money will be poured into developing the high-speed 4G mobile and fibre optic broadband network to improve internet speeds that are slower than in many developing countries, including Malaysia, Thailand and Taiwan.
Technology experts say a key reason for the slow speeds in China is the government censorship system nicknamed the “Great Firewall”, which is regarded as the world’s most pervasive and sophisticated online censorship regime.
The ruling Communist party has prioritised innovation and moving up the value chain from low-end manufacturing as one of its main economic goals and has identified online services and ecommerce as particularly
On Tuesday, the government revealed a plan to counter an economic slowdown with the development of high-tech industries. Some in China argue that fostering innovation requires a free and open exchange of ideas, particularly on the internet, but that runs counter to the view of the authoritarian state. On Wednesday, China’s top military newspaper declared the internet the most
“Western hostile forces, as well as a few ‘ideological traitors’ in our country, are using the internet on their computers and mobile phones to viciously attack our party,” said an editorial in the People’s Liberation Army Daily that was reposted on the website of party journal Seeking Truth.
China must defend its “cyber-sovereignty” with ideological purity or “the public will be led astray by the enemy”, it said.
“Their fundamental purpose is to use ‘universal values’ to confuse us, and ‘constitutional democracy’ to disturb us.” It also called for a massive “red army” of “seed-planters and propaganda teams” to defend the “online Great Wall”.
President Xi Jinping was quoted in state media telling party members they needed to befriend “outstanding intellectuals from new media organisations” so as to convince them to “accept the leadership of the party” and to encourage them to “purify” cyber space.
China has more than 630m internet users and 570m mobile subscribers, according to government figures. But average speeds ranked 82nd in the world at the end of last year, according to US cloud computing company Akamai Technologies.
In an attempt to improve services, China’s three big state-owned telecom providers said last week they would cut mobile data fees by 20-35 per cent.