China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has released a work plan on the development of industrial internet, listing 11 key actions and 54 specific measures in the sector.

The work plan proposes to formulate and implement an upgraded version of the "5G+Industrial Internet" 512 project, which is to promote the integration, innovation and development of "5G+Industrial Internet" and improve its development management platform.

In terms of infrastructure, it will facilitate no less than 3,000 enterprises to build 5G factories and construct no less than 300 5G factories, creating 30 pilot benchmarks. The first batch of 5G factory directories will be released as well.

The plan also aims to promote high-quality development of external networks of China Telecom, China Mobile and China Unicom to connect enterprises and cloud platform resources, servicing over 3,000 enterprises. The idea is to accelerate the transformation and development of enterprises' internal networks in key industries, support the construction of private 5G networks in mining enterprises, and upgrade the networks in chemical industrial zones.

China has been promoting the application of the "5G+Industrial Internet" as the 5G network has entered the fast lane of innovation development.

By the end of April, China had built 2.73 million 5G base stations, with 5G networks covering all prefecture-level cities and the 5G-enabled mobile phone users reaching 634 million, according to a press briefing for the Global Digital Economy Conference 2023 on Wednesday.

The industrial internet has been fully integrated into 45 major sectors within the national economy, with an industrial scale of more than 1.2 trillion yuan (about $166.9 billion). The "5G+Industrial Internet" has been applied in thousands of industries and extended to the core links of production, according to the press briefing.

The country is also eyeing next-generation internet and other frontier fields and comprehensively advancing the research and development of sixth-generation (6G) communications technology.