Internet Plus: One Year On

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Internet Plus: One Year On

China Financial Weekly February 22

Internet Plus, a national strategy proposed in March 2015 as a new engine for economic growth, calls for the integration of the Internet with traditional industries.It has presented unprecedented opportunities for China’s economic and social transition.It has also posed challenges that deserve much attention.

For instance, as new business models are developed under the Internet Plus strategy, they have unveiled potential risks and a supervision vacuum.The fiercest conflict arises in the model of Internet Plus Traveling, where online taxi-hailing business moves the cheese of conventional taxi service providers.

At the same time, supportive policies and measures are still absent in some fledgling commercial areas.There is also a shortage of professionals good at both Internet operations and conventional businesses.

The development of Internet Plus largely depends on basic infrastructure construction like cloud computing and broadband, but despite the burgeoning broadband network in the past few years, China is still plagued by slow speed and excessively high Internet service charges.Asfor this issue, schemes have already taken shape at the national level.For instance, efforts will be made to ensure an almost 100-percent coverage of optical networks in cities.

One important option to reach success is to make the most of Internet-savvy professionals and give a bigger role to them in a company’s decision-making process.When conventional businesses are joined by such people, successful transformations will come more easily.