The plans are bold and vague: China wants to bring technology into its mainstream infrastructure build-out and, in the process, heave the economy out of a gloom due only partly to the coronavirus.
Over the next few years, national-level plans include injecting more than 2.5-trillion yuan (US$352-billion) into over 550 000 base stations, a key building block of 5G infrastructure, and 500-billion yuan into ultra-high-voltage power.
They want data centres and cloud computing projects, among other things
Local governments have ideas, too.
Building big things is a tried and true fallback in China, from the nation’s own road-and-rail networks to its most important soft-power foreign policy, the belt-and-road initiative to connect the globe in a physical network for trade.
The reality is that the central government approved projects add up to only around 10% of infrastructure spending and 3% of total fixed-asset investment.
