China key to turning cyberspace truly global

A visitor tries out wearable device at the Light of the Internet Expo in Wuzhen, Zhejiang province, Dec 14, 2015. [Photo /chinadaily.com.cn]

China holds a pivotal role in the Internet. It had more than 650 million Internet users by the end of last year and it is the largest and fastest growing information and communications technology consumer market in the world. The Chinese ICT sector is currently valued at €433 billion ($477.472 billion) and it is growing at an annual average rate of 7 percent, the fastest in the world. The country has made tremendous progress in Internet development in the past decade having become the most active e-commerce market in the world.

However, if we look at the distribution of the world's ICT sector, China does not rank first. It ranks third. In 2012 China accounted for 13 percent of the world's ICT, behind the United States (32 percent) and the European Union (23 percent). In the same year, the value of the EU's ICT sector exceeded €516 billion.

These figures show the tremendous growth opportunities of China's ICT industry. Obviously, the strategy should not be just to copy leading brands or seek to produce "Chinese" products. The ICT industry is not the car industry. It doesn't just produce a series of final products; it produces interconnected systems too. In the ICT industry, we cannot innovate in isolation. Each single new product or system needs to be compatible — to interoperate — with those of upstream service providers and of the applications that users want.

Even more than in other globalized industries, the keyword in ICT is specialization. In other words, China should not promote investments in areas where other countries or economies are strong, but seek cooperation instead. In this regard, an analysis of the ICT statistics of China and the EU show how complementary China's and Europe's ICT sectors are.

China is very strong in manufacturing — more than 50 percent of the ICT sector comprises the manufacturing of telecom equipment, consumer electronics and electronic components. The EU instead dominates in high-end innovative services and IT applications, which together account for more than 55 percent of regional ICT sector.