(JW Insights) Apr 23 -- China's efforts in promoting 6G, quantum communication and other core technologies will help the country to stabilize key industrial chains amid external trade protectionism and further inject fresh impetus into economic recovery, noted industry experts, reported China Daily on April 22.

The experts' remarks followed news on April 20 that China will accelerate steps to achieve breakthroughs in core technologies such as 6G, optical communication and quantum communication.

Zhao Zhiguo, spokesman for the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), said at a news conference on April 20 that more efforts will be made to beef up research and development in tech frontiers such as AI and blockchain. Measures are afoot to tackle bottlenecks in areas like key components and systems, and safeguard the stability of global industrial and supply chains.

Yang Cuihong, professor of global value chain and relocation at the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, said that amid COVID-19 disruptions and rising trade protectionism, China's efforts in making breakthroughs in core technologies will lay a foundation for stabilizing industrial chains in the long term.

"Grasping core technologies at hand will help a country to lead an industrial chain. A country will never lose control of an industrial chain once it has technological innovations," she said.

To make breakthroughs in core technologies, the first task is to solve the technical shortcomings and then concentrate on overcoming them, Yang emphasized.

"More importantly, China has accumulated advantages in the development of the digital economy. More efforts are needed to seize this opportunity to form some of our own industrial clusters in some key industries," Yang added.

A white paper released by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, a government think tank, stated that the market scale of China's digital economy reached $7.25 trillion last year, which was the second-largest globally.

China's 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25) states that the country aims to boost the output of core industries of the nation's digital economy to 10 percent of the country's GDP by 2025, up from 7.8 percent in 2020.

Chen Duan, head of the Digital Economy Integration and Innovative Development Center based at the Central University of Finance and Economics, noted, "The country's efforts in driving new digital infrastructure like 6G and AI not only stimulate current investment, but also drive the upgrade of traditional industries and future consumption."

Chen added, "Such efforts are also in line with the country's overall plan for building a digital China to drive Chinese-style modernization. If the next generation of information technology can be adopted as early as possible, there would be fewer losses caused by technology iterations," said the China Daily report.

(Chen HX)