Optimize policies for country's digital future: China Mobile chairman

As data becomes a key production factor in the digital economy, data centers remain the central component for receiving, processing, storing and forwarding information. As China digitizes further, the energy consumption and carbon emissions of data centers also rise.

How can digital development, energy conservation and emissions reductions grow in concert? Yang Jie, chairman of China Mobile and a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, shared his proposals for this year's two sessions with China Daily website during a written interview.

Yang proposed establishing a more scientific carbon emission evaluation system for data centers, accelerating the process of itemizing energy consumption of data centers, promoting the Power Usage Effectiveness assessment of data centers and improving the integration of digital and green development.

Last year, the 20th CPC National Congress drafted strategic plans for building China into a cyber power, and the Central Economic Work Conference proposed the vigorous development of the digital economy, which brought new opportunities to the industry.

China Mobile, as one of the country's top telecom operators, had opened more than 1.28 million 5G base stations by the end of 2022, providing steady coverage across the country in areas both urban and rural.

According to Yang, the company will continue to deepen the construction of its 5G network in 2023, and plans to build more than 300,000 5G base stations.

China Mobile has also reduced more than 10 percent of its energy consumption and carbon emission intensity last year. It also helped society as a whole reduce its carbon emissions by 260 million tons in 2022, the chairman said.

Yang added the firm has contributed to the digitization of government functions, providing information solutions on public security, justice, emergency response and water conservancy to nearly 200 cities in 27 provinces.

China Mobile has also provided services to more than 20 million small and medium-sized enterprises in 2022, with information product packages helping 5 million SMEs in their digital transformation.

In addition to serving the domestic market, China Mobile also actively participates in digital infrastructure construction projects along the Belt and Road. Its data centers are located in the UK, Germany, Singapore, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and other places around the world, helping Chinese auto companies such as BYD establish themselves overseas.

Additionally, in 2022 China Mobile increased the internet access rate for primary and secondary schools to 99.7 percent, benefiting 106,000 schools. Along with the Ministry of Education, the company released 5G cloud exam centers, serving more than 1.6 million exams in 500 schools. During the pandemic period, the company provided online services for 2.11 million online classes in 310 cities, assisting in the education of 730 million people.

At this year's two sessions, the chairman also proposed formulating a national development plan for programming education for primary and middle school students which gradually incorporates programming into major subject curricula of primary and middle schools and the entrance examinations for high school and university.

He said he believes the information technology capabilities of the group born after 2010 will determine the overall level of social innovation, and popularizing basic programming education will help lay a solid foundation for high-quality talent in the new era.