He Guili, Vice President of Internet Society of China, released the China Internet Development Report 2021 at the opening ceremony of the China Internet conference.

To follow up the Internet development in China, the Report summarizes the current situation, deepens research, and explores laws, aiming to describe a new scenario for China’s Internet development, and provide a comprehensive reference for government departments, industry organizations, and industry experts to understand and master China’s Internet development, so as to grasp the digital development opportunities.

He Guili said the year 2020 is an extraordinary year, and China’s Internet industry has played an irreplaceable positive role in fighting the epidemic, normalizing epidemic prevention and control and resuming work and production. Seizing the historical opportunity presented by information transformation, China’s Internet industry has made historic achievements in cyber infrastructure, innovation in core cyber technologies, the release of driving forces in the Internet industry, cyber security governance and the building of a community with a shared future in cyberspace.

According to the report, by the end of 2020, China had 989 million Internet users and Internet penetration rate reached 70.4%, with over 1.6 billion mobile Internet users. The number of 5G network users exceeded 160 million, accounting for about 89% of the world’s total 5G users. The construction of mobile network facilities of basic telecom enterprises, especially 5G networks, will be accelerated. By 2020, 900,000 new mobile base stations will be built, bringing the total to 9.31 million. The scale of the industrial Internet industry reached 916.48 billion yuan. The digital economy continued to grow rapidly, and the integration of information technology with the real economy accelerated. China’s total output reached 39.2 trillion yuan, ranking second in the world.

The year 2021 marks the beginning of China’s 14th Five-Year Plan, the beginning of a new journey to comprehensively build a modern socialist country and march toward the second centenary goal. It is also the 20th anniversary of the founding of Internet Society of China. With “innovative thinking, collaborative culture, open platform and effective service” as its guiding ideology and starting point, ISC will open a new chapter in its 14th Five-Year Plan. In the next step, Internet Society of China will release reports on Internet segmentation in succession, expecting to provide professional reference for Internet management departments, enterprises and industry experts.