Productivity in China Could Surge With IT Revolution

The meteoric rise of China’s internet champions, Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent, has given China the world's largest e-commerce market. However, internet penetration overall is low: most Chinese firms are not connected to the internet, and new trends such as cloud computing and 'big data' have not yet had a major impact in China. As rising labour costs erode China's competitiveness, Beijing looks to technology to enhance productivity, and is driving large-scale investments in superfast telecoms networks across the country to 'wire in' the small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that form the backbone of the economy. China is upgrading its telecoms infrastructure faster than anywhere else in the world, and is on course to become a world leader within a few years.