Blue Book: China Has the World’s Largest 5G Network, Achieving “5G Coverage in Every County”

On November 21, at the Wuzhen Summit of the 2024 World Internet Conference, the “China Internet Development Report 2024” and the “World Internet Development Report 2024” blue books, compiled by the China Academy of Network and supported by high-end think tanks and research institutions in the domestic internet sector, were officially released. The “China Internet Development Report 2024” shows that China has the world’s largest 5G network, with a 5G user penetration rate exceeding 60%, achieving “5G coverage in every county.” Meanwhile, breakthroughs have been made in key 6G technologies.
2024 marks the 10th anniversary of General Secretary Xi Jinping’s strategic goal of building a powerful network nation and the 30th anniversary of China’s full-functional access to the international internet. Since 2017, the blue book has been released globally for eight consecutive years, serving as a significant theoretical and practical research achievement of the World Internet Conference. It fully demonstrates the new progress and achievements in internet development and has received widespread attention both domestically and internationally.
The “China Internet Development Report 2024” reveals that China’s digital economy has continued to expand over the past year. In 2023, the added value of China’s core digital economy industries exceeded 12 trillion yuan, accounting for about 10% of GDP. The top-level design and systematic layout of the digital economy have been continuously promoted, driving the further release of data element value and empowering economic and social development. According to the National Data Resource Survey Working Group’s calculations, in 2023, China’s total data production reached 32.85 ZB, with a growth rate of 22.44%. The data trading market has developed orderly, and in 2023, China’s data trading volume exceeded 160 billion yuan.
In terms of information infrastructure, all prefecture-level cities in China have become optical network cities, with gigabit users accounting for over 70% of the global total. The world’s first 400G all-optical provincial backbone network link has been officially commercialized. China boasts the world’s largest 5G network, with a total of 3.837 million 5G base stations by June 2024 and a 5G user penetration rate exceeding 60%, achieving “5G coverage in every county.” Breakthroughs have been made in key 6G technologies, with China successfully establishing the world’s first 6G field test network integrating communication and intelligence. The construction of computing infrastructure has accelerated, with China’s total in-use data center rack scale exceeding 8.1 million standard racks by the end of 2023, and its total computing scale reaching 230 EFLOPS (230 quintillion floating-point operations per second), ranking second globally.
The “World Internet Development Report 2024” indicates that by the end of 2023, the total number of 5G base stations deployed globally exceeded 5.17 million, with a year-on-year growth of 42%. The total number of global 5G users surpassed 1.57 billion, with a 5G penetration rate of 18.6%. In 2024, the data center market revenue is expected to reach $340.2 billion. The United States leads globally in terms of total data center scale, and by the end of 2023, the number of hyperscale data centers worldwide reached 992. The field of artificial intelligence technology is exhibiting unprecedented innovation vitality and competition, with China and the United States continuing to lead. The United States maintains its lead in the development, investment, and commercial application of top AI models, while China demonstrates advantages in AI innovation potential and market scale. According to the “Global Digital Economy White Paper (2024),” in 2023, the total digital economy of five countries—the United States, China, Germany, Japan, and Korea—exceeded $33 trillion, with a year-on-year growth of over 8%. Emerging economies show strong digital economy growth, with Saudi Arabia, Norway, and Russia ranking among the top three globally in digital economy growth rate, all exceeding 20%.
The head of the China Academy of Network expressed that the academy will always be committed to researching major frontier issues in the internet field and is willing to work closely with high-end think tanks and research institutions in the internet sector worldwide to enhance communication, strengthen cooperation, and contribute wisdom and strength to promoting the construction of a community with a shared future in cyberspace.