Internet Plus

“Internet Plus” is a new format of internet development under Innovation 2.0. It covers a wide range of fields, including government services, education, healthcare, finance, advanced manufacturing, agriculture and traffic, and plays a number of roles in people’ s lives.

Premier Li Keqiang first proposed the Internet Plus initiative in the government work report during the third session of the 12th National People's Congress on March 5, 2015. Premier Li stressed on many occasions that China should promote the new drivers of growth fostered by Internet Plus to create huge potential for a new industrial revolution.

Simply put, Internet Plus refers to internet plus traditional industries. However, it doesn’t mean a simple combination, but rather a deep integration of them to create new development ecology by taking advantage of information and communication technology and the internet platform. The initiative gives full play to the role of the internet in optimizing and integrating the allocation of social resources, deeply integrates the achievements of internet innovation into economic and social fields to enhance society’s creativity and productivity, and forms a new and more extensive form of industry based on the internet.

Internet plus public services

The smart public service promoted by the mobile internet enables people to get easier access to various public services through their mobile phones and improves overall social efficiency. For example, people can get public services such as healthcare, answers to urban transportation queries, vehicle services and provident fund service through “Public Services” on WeChat, which greatly improves convenience and efficiency. Another good example is Yueshengshi (meaning Guangdong Provincial Affairs), China’s first mini program on WeChat dedicated to public services. Residents in Guangdong province can easily handle a variety of public services on the platform after user authentication.

Internet plus education

On the one hand, the internet has greatly magnified the role and value of high quality education resources. A good teacher can now serve thousands or even tens of thousands of students due to convenient network communication, which helps improve the unequal distribution of education resources and enables students to learn whenever and wherever they want at lower cost. On the other hand, the high connectivity of the internet makes it possible for trans-regional, multi-industry and diachronic cooperative studies, which largely avoids low-level repetition and speeds up upgrading of research. In the Internet Plus era, the previous education divide that resulted from unbalanced regional development and different teacher qualities will be gradually narrowed.

Internet plus healthcare

Through internet-aided medical treatment, people can monitor their health data from a mobile terminal and take precautions in advance. During the process of treatment, the mobile healthcare apps can help a lot, from online registration and consultation to payment and instant communication, both saving time and cost and improving service experience. Internet healthcare represents a new trend for medical industry development and is conducive to resolving the unbalance between China’s medical resources and people’s increasing demand for healthcare. As of May 8, 2019, there were 158 internet-based hospitals nationwide. The policy system of internet plus healthcare has been basically established and the industry has a sound development momentum.

Internet plus finance

Internet finance is a new financial business mode in which traditional financial institutions and internet enterprises employ internet technology as well as information communication technology to provide financing, payment, investment and infomediary services. The ongoing deep integration of the internet and finance represents the general trend, which will have a profound impact on financial products, businesses, organizations and services. Since 2013, internet finance has become a new branch of the financial industry with a series of internet plus finance modes including online wealth management, online payment, e-commerce loans, P2P and crowd-funding becoming more popular. These new modes help working-class people and small and micro businesses to get financial support and contribute to mass entrepreneurship and innovation.

Internet plus retail

In addition to the vigorous development of today’s well-known e-commerce enterprises such as Taobao, JD.com and Suning, content e-commerce and social e-commerce are becoming more prevalent. Toutiao, Douyin, WeChat and other products have begun to convert their large volume of entertainment and social traffic into shopping traffic, and the scale of business on those apps has grown rapidly over the past few years.

Internet plus industry

Mobile internet, cloud computing, big data, Internet of Things, and other emerging information and communication technologies have been adopted by traditional manufacturing enterprises to transform their original products as well as research and production modes, which is consistent with the connotation of industrial internet Industry 4.0. With the help of mobile internet technology, traditional manufacturers can add network software and hardware modules to industrial products such as automobiles, home appliances and accessories to realize functions such as remote control and automatic data collection and analysis, which will greatly enhance user experience.

Internet plus agriculture

From production to operation, from management to service, each link of the agricultural chain has been profoundly influenced by the internet through means of facilitation, real-time, instrumentation and intellectualization, which is conducive to the development of smart agriculture, precision agriculture, efficient agriculture and green agriculture. These advances boost the quality, efficiency and competitiveness of agriculture, and realize the transformation from traditional agriculture to modern agriculture.

Internet plus traffic

Giving the public access to comprehensive and accurate travel information is an important starting point for the construction of intelligent transportation. With the popularity of mobile internet devices, apps like Baidu map and Didi have brought great convenience to people’s daily travels. Baidu map provides users with services such as intelligent route planning, intelligent navigation and real-time traffic data. Mobile car-hailing platform Didi Chuxing not only makes it easier for people to use cars, but by creating many new job opportunities gives people another way to gain.

All in all, the organic combination of internet and traditional industries is targeted at the following: lower costs, higher efficiency and better user experience.