China Reaches Digital Milestone: Gigabit Access in All Counties, 5G in Every City
Sun Ji, Deputy Director of the Department of Information and Communication Development at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), stated that China has been continuously advancing the evolution and upgrade of its new information infrastructure system. By the end of July, the number of 5G base stations had reached 4.598 million, and gigabit optical network ports exceeded 30.53 million, achieving “gigabit access in every county and 5G coverage in every prefecture-level city.” The national integrated computing power network is also accelerating—by the end of June, the number of standard data center racks in use had reached 10.85 million, with intelligent computing power scaling up to 788 EFLOPS (FP16 half-precision).
At the same time, the information and communication technology industry continues to gain strength, achieving breakthroughs in key technologies and making new progress in the layout of critical sectors, thereby stimulating vitality for industrial and enterprise development. Sun Ji noted that China has established a complete 5G industrial chain covering chips, terminals, base station equipment, and testing instruments. Emerging fields such as artificial intelligence and satellite internet are accelerating their expansion. Open-source models, represented by DeepSeek, are growing rapidly, giving rise to numerous vertical-specific large models.
Constellations including StarNet, Qianfan, and Tianqi are speeding up their network deployment. Innovation capabilities in future industries such as quantum information and the low-altitude economy continue to improve. The number of market entities is also expanding, with 186,500 enterprises now holding telecommunications business operation licenses, a year-on-year increase of 10%.
Furthermore, the empowerment of various industries through information and communication technology is deepening. New technologies such as 5G, industrial internet, artificial intelligence, and digital twins are widely used in the R&D and design phases, promoting transformation in innovation paradigms, improving R&D efficiency, and reshaping the innovation system in the industrial sector. For example, the R&D cycle of smart manufacturing demonstration factories in key sectors including large aircraft, new energy vehicles, and high-speed trains has been shortened by nearly 30% on average. So far, 5G applications have integrated into 86 out of 97 major categories of the national economy, with more than 138,000 use cases accelerating extension into core production processes. These 5G-enabled factories have seen an average production capacity increase of 19.6% and a reduction in operating costs of 14.5%, demonstrating significant improvements in quality and efficiency.
In the next phase, MIIT will coordinate efforts in the “construction, application, and research” of the information and communication industry, accelerate the deployment of 5G-A product systems and high-quality networks, advance 6G technology R&D, and proactively plan and cultivate the 6G application industry ecosystem.