China's telecommunications industry ran smoothly in general and registered steady expansion in the first half of 2024, official data showed.
In the January-June period, the total business volume of telecom increased by 11.1 percent year on year, maintaining a double-digit growth.
The combined business revenue of firms in the sector totaled 894.1 billion yuan (about 123.09 billion U.S. dollars) in the period, rising three percent year on year, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
Combined revenue of emerging businesses, such as internet data centers, big data, cloud computing, and the Internet of Things, continued to log double-digit growth. In the first six months, a total business revenue of 227.9 billion yuan (about 31.38 billion U.S. dollars) was achieved, driving a 2.7-percentage-point growth in the sector's business revenue.
"In the first half of the year, industrial digitalization entered a crucial phase of deepening applications, with the continuously upgrading demand for digitization in the economy and society. Major industry models are accelerating their landing in government affairs, healthcare, energy, construction, and cultural and tourism industries, bringing new growth points to cloud computing, the Internet of Things, integration, and others businesses," said Xie Songyan, a researcher of the Policy and Economic Research Institute at the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology.
In the first half of this year, the building of information infrastructure such as 5G, gigabit optical networks, and computing power was steadily advancing.
By the end of June, the total number of 5G base stations in the country had reached nearly 3.92 million, an increase of 540,000 compared with the end of the previous year. The country's 5G mobile phone users reached 927 million, with a net increase of 105 million from the end of the previous year.
China's telecom sector logs steady growth in H1
The China-Africa Industrial Cooperation Conference was held in Beijing on Saturday, drawing over 500 attendees, including Chinese and African business leaders and diplomats.
Themed "Sharing Development Opportunities of Modernization", the event sought to foster collaboration between China and Africa across various sectors following the 2024 Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, the largest diplomatic event hosted by China in recent years, which concluded on Friday.
"Certainly, we expect a lot more cooperation, particularly in the areas of energy. We have a serious challenge in terms of energy in my country Zambia following the effects of climate change and the droughts. The electricity generation capacity has been wiped out, so we need to diversify our energy sources with the expansion in solar and wind," said Ivan Zyuulu, Zambian Ambassador to China.
Abubakar Hassan Abubakar, assistant minister at Kenya’s Ministry of Trade, Investments and Industry, emphasized the importance of China's vast market to Kenyan producers who would benefit from strengthening trade ties between China and Kenya.
"Of course, we are expecting more cooperation because, as I had said, China is the largest trading partner in Kenya and now, we want to position ourselves for Kenya to be the largest investment partner. We want them to invest in and produce either agricultural or industrial products and serve the rest of the world, but also serve China itself because you can see that President Xi Jinping is opening up this market, and we want to take advantage of that market," he said.
The Alliance of Chinese Business in Africa for Social Responsibilities (ACBASR) published a new Blue Book at the conference about the "One Hundred Enterprises and One Thousand Villages" initiative, estimated to have benefited 10,000 people in Africa by supporting work to protect the rights and interests of women and children and promote environmental sustainability and community development.
China-Africa Industrial Cooperation Conference held in Beijing
