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China drinks Uber, IoT and e-health Kool Aid

Middle Kingdom calls for 'cloud platform' at heart of new modernisation push, plans to stop cranking out crud

China's State Council has signed off on a plan to place the internet of things at the heart of new efforts to upgrade the nation's manufacturing capabilities.

The “Made in China 2025” strategy aims to get China out of low-value manufacturing and into more impressive stuff. The State Council, China's equivalent of a parliamentary democracy's cabinet, specifies “robotic technology, advanced rail equipments, agricultural machines and high-performance medical instruments” as the sort of thing it wants China to get good at.

Exports and domestic consumption are on the minds of Middle Kingdom policy-makers, as “ … the State Council urged to carry forward the spirits of craftsmen in China, produce more creative and popular products with high quality, phase out substandard ones and revive consumers’ confidences in the products made in China.”

The Council's plan starts with the Internet Plus plan it's revealed, and re-revealed, a few times now. That plans now been elaborated upon a little as starting with an “intelligent logistics system to develop Internet of Things. It required expanding the broadband construction in rural areas, transporting agricultural products to cities and industrial products to the villages and providing conveniences for sales of the agricultural products to increase farmers’ income, and diversify the supply for cities and keep the prices of goods stable.”

The Council also signed off on the notion that China should “promote the integration of online and offline business and accelerate the development of sharing economy.” The Council apparently is also keen on “the intelligentization and informatization for traditional businesses” and “will support enterprises’ optimize resources and expand markets with the aid of the Internet.”

The cloud is seen as central to those plans, as the Council “... urged establishing cloud platform for business services and cracking down on infringement so as to create a fair and competitive environment.”

The Council's communique also mentioned its plan to “promote the nationwide interconnection of the basic medical insurance systems and the settlement of the medical expenses in different places. About 70,000 resident doctors will be trained, of which 5,000 are pediatricians. The health information platform for population at all levels will be promoted to be established and interconnected.”

Will any of this happen? When China's government sets targets, the nation uncannily hits them every time. While observers sometimes point out is rather at odds with street-level experiences, China's given itself until 2025 to get this all done so has plenty of time to sort things out, either in reality or on the official record. ®

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